Eddy Siswanto. Knowledge and perception of pneumonia disease among mothers of children under five years attending Nakhon Pathom General Hospital, Thailand . Master's Degree(Primary Health Care Management). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2007.
Knowledge and perception of pneumonia disease among mothers of children under five years attending Nakhon Pathom General Hospital, Thailand
Abstract:
A hospital based cross sectional study was conducted to describe sociodemographic
factors of mothers, mother’s knowledge and mother’s perception of
pneumonia disease. Study was conducted at Nakhon Pathom General Hospital,
Thailand period 22 to 30 January 2007 by interviewing 140 mothers of children under
five years attending a pediatric clinic by using structured questionnaire.
This study found mothers were predominantly primary school graduates
(37.14 %). The majority worked as laborer (39.29 %) with medium level of family
income per month (87.86 %). Around 66% of the mothers had fair knowledge about
pneumonia. From this result, it was found that only a few mothers answered all the
questions correctly in terms of simple signs and symptoms of pneumonia (7%) and
around 21% of the mothers answered all the questions correctly in terms of cause and
factors related with pneumonia. Around 81% of the mothers had good perception and
only a small number of mothers gave correct answers for all the statements, which
was only 7% of all the mothers. Finally, no significant associations were found among
the occurrence of pneumonia, mother’s knowledge and mother’s perception.
The lack of knowledge among mothers about simple signs and symptoms of
pneumonia, and also the lack of knowledge about its causes and factors related with
pneumonia become important findings of this study. The low perception of perceived
benefits became dominant among all the perception’s dimensions of the four found in
this study. Community based public health education and training for health providers
at all levels about correct and applicable prevention and assessments of pneumonia
and other dangerous diseases should be promoted to ensure better transfer knowledge,
better perception and better health practices in the community