A study of sanitary practices and its association with diarrhoea in rural children / role of education
by
RP Misra
Department of Community Medicine, KG Medical College, Lucknow and Institute of Applied Statistics and Development Studies, Lucknow
Coauthors: VK Srivastava, AK Nigam

The present study was carried out on 159 children whose parents were educated about the importance of sanitary practices and its role in reducing childhood diarrhoea through a campaign approach along with messages related to good hygiene. Another 165 children were taken as control where no such education was imparted. The education mainly focussed on the use of sanitary latrines and washing of hand before meals, after defaecation and after cleaning infant’s faeces. The impact of the health education was assessed at the end of one year. A significant reduction in diarrhoea was found at the end of one year (from 14.2 to 7.4%) in those families where the education was imparted as compared to those where no such education was given. The logistic regression was applied to study the relative importance of various factors in reducing the diarrhoea, the details of which will be discussed.

Date received: December 9, 2002