Fathers are an under-used resource for the improvement of child health, in most of the developing countries. To implement and sustain the child survival program in the developing world, there is a need to assess the roles of fathers in child health care. The Health belief model is the framework for the study. The father’s health treatment behavior will depend on his ability to detect illness symptoms in his under-five year old child, give the symptoms a label or name, seek for alternative choices in resolving the symptoms,take decisions to resolve the problem and evaluate his actions. A cross sectional study was conducted in two communities and a total of 550 pairs of fathers and mothers (330 pairs in urban area and 220 pairs from rural area) who had a sick child within the last 4 weeks were interviewed using a pre-piloted questionnaire. Fathers and mothers agreed that mothers were the first to discover that child was sick. Majority, 91% of the fathers and 97.6% of mothers indicated they were personally involved in taking decisions and caring for their sick children. Only 7.7 % of fathers and 5.5% of mothers indicated joint decisions were made in the care of their child. Most respondents had low level of knowledge on the symptoms of diseases highlighted by the study. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that on the first action taken in the care of child, (p=0.01) fathers are 7 times less likely to be personally involved in child treatment than mothers. Urban dwellers were more likely to take an action than rural dwellers. These findings buttress the urgent need for an educational program that will improve the knowledge of fathers about childhood illnesses. This will improve their identification of illness, participation in supporting both care and biomedical facility utilization in the care of their sick children. This will reduce the under -five morbidity and mortality.
Session #1208 - Family
The 29th Annual MNRS Research Conference (April 1-4, 2005)