Department of Emergency and Critical Care Nursing, School of Nursing, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia.
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Institute of Public Health, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia.
PLoS One. 2022 Mar 17;17(3):e0264707. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264707. eCollection 2022.
Early diagnosis and treatment of childhood fever are essential for controlling disease progression and death. However, the Treatment-seeking behaviour of caregivers is still a significant challenge in rural parts of the African region. This study aimed to assess individual and community-level factors associated with treatment-seeking behaviours among caregivers of febrile under-five age children in Ethiopia.
The recent Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey data (EDHS 2016) was used for the study. The survey collected information among 1,354 under-five children who had a fever within two weeks before the survey. The data were extracted, cleaned, and recoded using STATA version 14. Multilevel logistic regressions were used to determine the magnitude and associated factors of treatment-seeking behaviour among caregivers with febrile children in Ethiopia. Four models were built to estimate both fixed and random effects of individual and community-level factors between cluster variations on treatment-seeking behaviour. The Adjusted Odds Ratios with 95% Confidence Intervals (CI) of the best-fitted model were reported at p<0.05.
This study revealed that 491 (36.26%) caregivers seek treatment for their febrile children. Living in metropolitan and small peripheral regions, delivery at health institutions, being poorer, middle and richer wealth quintiles, having a child with diarrhoea, cough, short rapid breathing, and wasting were positively associated with treatment-seeking behaviour of caregivers.
The caregivers had poor treatment-seeking behaviour for their febrile children in Ethiopia. Health education programmers should emphasise the importance of seeking early treatment, taking action on childhood febrile illness signs.
早期诊断和治疗儿童发热对于控制疾病进展和死亡至关重要。然而，在非洲农村地区，照顾者的治疗寻求行为仍然是一个重大挑战。本研究旨在评估与埃塞俄比亚 5 岁以下发热儿童照顾者的治疗寻求行为相关的个体和社区层面因素。
本研究使用了最近的埃塞俄比亚人口与健康调查（EDHS 2016）数据。该调查收集了在调查前两周内有发热症状的 1354 名 5 岁以下儿童的信息。使用 STATA 版本 14 对数据进行提取、清理和重新编码。使用多水平逻辑回归模型来确定埃塞俄比亚发热儿童照顾者治疗寻求行为的幅度和相关因素。建立了四个模型来估计个体和社区层面因素的固定和随机效应，以确定簇间变异对治疗寻求行为的影响。报告了最佳拟合模型的调整后优势比及其 95%置信区间（CI），p 值<0.05。
本研究表明，491 名（36.26%）照顾者为发热儿童寻求治疗。生活在大都市和小周边地区、在医疗机构分娩、经济条件较差、处于中等和较富裕的五分位数、孩子有腹泻、咳嗽、呼吸急促和消瘦的照顾者更有可能寻求治疗。
埃塞俄比亚的照顾者对发热儿童的治疗寻求行为较差。健康教育计划应强调早期治疗的重要性，对儿童发热疾病的迹象采取行动。
