Swapnil Chintaman Patil and Priyanka Dixit
Health care seeking behavior among children, aged<5 years, is strongly influenced by maternal practices as the mothers contribute to the decision making. In this study, the mothers’ knowledge, attitude and practices were studied as well as the factors responsible for the health seeking behavior in diarrheal diseases was examined. Two hundred and thirty mothers of children, aged<5 years were sampled. The study showed that the education, occupation, attitude and, knowledge of the mother was strongly associated to positive health seeking behavior in diarrheal diseases. The factors affecting the health care seeking behavior were the decision making abilities of the mothers and the source from which they got the information regarding diarrhea. The income of the household was also associated with the attitude and the practices of the mother for diarrhea. Among social factors, caste was seen to be associated with the health seeking behavior. Thus, there is need for the information and effective communication between the health workers and the mothers and the betterment of the public health facilities in the rural areas.