The term hygiene is derived from the name of the antique Greek deity of beneficial living-Hygeia. Hygiene refers to the set of practices linked to the conservation of health and healthy living [1]. It involves usual washing of the body (bathing), washing the hands when essential, washing ones' clothing, washing the hair, brushing the teeth, cutting the nails, and caring for the gums [2]. Children are predominantly vulnerable to the neglect of necessary personal hygiene [3]. 

As per [4] Nutritional status is influenced by three broad factors: food, health and care. Optimal nutritional status results when children have access to affordable, diverse, nutrient-rich food; appropriate maternal and child-care practices; adequate health services; and a healthy environment including safe water, sanitation and good hygiene practices. These factors directly influence nutrient intake and the presence of disease. The interaction between undernutrition and infection creates a potentially lethal cycle of worsening illness and deteriorating nutritional status.

Diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five years old, and is responsible for killing around 525000 children every year [5]. Hygiene practices have been proven to reduce diarrhea rates by 30–40 percent [6, 7].

Childcare is mostly the responsibility of mothers, therefore, the mother’s knowledge of childcare influences the nature and quality of care that is given to the child. The mother’s level of education has a positive impact on her knowledge and how she deals with child care issues, our experience in pediatric practice has revealed significant gap pertaining to child care issues in mother’s knowledge [8].

Mother is the principle provider of the primary care that her child needs during the first five years of life. Nutritional awareness of mothers play an important role in the health of children aged 0-5 years. The type of care she provides depends to a large extent on her knowledge and understanding of some aspects of basic nutrition and health care. Mothers educational level, position, health and nutritional status is central to the quality of life and is a key ingredient of her child’s health, nutritional status, behavioral and other aspects of child welfare in developing countries. Nationwide as well as micro studies clearly show that incidence of under nutrition among children fell monotonically with the maternal education [9].

Mothers who have a strong body of knowledge of child development have been found to interact with their children more positively compared with mothers with less knowledge [10,11]. Several co relational studies show that mothers with high knowledge of child development   are more likely to provide books and learning materials tailored to children's interests and age and engage in more reading, talking, and storytelling relative to mothers with less knowledge [12-14].

Considering above background, which highlighted the importance of mother's knowledge regarding personal child care hygiene, this study was conducted to find out the impact of personal child care hygiene counselling on knowledge, attitude and practices of the mothers towards preschool children.

Objectives of the Study

• To counsel and educate mothers towards personal child care hygiene of the preschool children.
• To evaluate the impact of the counselling intervention on personal child care hygiene knowledge, attitude and practices of the mothers towards preschool children.

Hypothesis

There will be no significant relationship between counselling of mothers on personal   child care hygiene significantly improved the knowledge, attitude, and practices of the mothers towards preschool children.

Target Population

• The target population was mothers of preschool children aged 3-5 years.

Study Population

• The study population was mother of preschool children aged 3-5 years living in pravaranagar region of Ahilyanagar District, Maharashtra State, India.

Inclusion Criteria

• Mothers of preschool children aged 3-5 years belong to pravaranagar region of Ahilyanagar District.
• Mothers who agreed to participate in the study.

Exclusion Criteria

• Mothers who had no children aged below 3 years.
• Mothers, who were unavailable, were excluded from the study.

Sample Selection

The study was carried out in 40 villages of pravaranagar region, which are situated in Rahata, Shrirampur, Rahuri and Sangamner Talukas of Ahilyanagar District of Maharashtra State. The List and names of the preschool children (3-5 years of age) and their mothers, had been collected from the various preschools and anganwadi centres of 40 selected villages. “Stratified random sampling” was used for selection sample for the present study. Mothers who agreed to participate were included in the study. 504 mothers were selected as a sample for the study. The selected mother became the respondents of the study. Before the counselling intervention programme, the baseline survey was conducted to ascertain the knowledge of mothers about nutrition and hygiene. A pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect the information on socio-economic/demographic and knowledge of mothers about nutrition and hygiene of selected 504 mothers. Finding from the base line study, out of selected 504 mothers, 308 mothers had poor knowledge on nutrition and hygiene. Among the 308 mothers, 300 mothers and their respective preschool children were selected as sub sample for the counselling intervention programme study. Out of these 300 mothers and their respective preschool children, 153 mothers and their respective preschool children were selected and treated as the experimental group for counselling intervention and the other 147 as the control group. The educational level of the mother was considered as the matching variable for both the experimental and the control groups.

Method of Data Collection

A pre-test–post-test control group design was chosen. The data was collected before and after the study in both the control and the experimental group. The experimental group received personal child care hygiene education through counselling by the researcher, while the control group did not. After the intervention, the final data collection was undertaken in both the experimental and control groups after the 3 months gap period from the completion of personal child care hygiene counselling intervention programme. In the present study KAP method was used to measure the impact of counselling. The KAP of mother's toward personal child care hygiene questionnaire items were rated and scored. The total score obtained for KAP on personal child care hygiene was classified into 3 categories: poor, fair and good.

Table 1: Distribution of the Mothers for counselling intervention programme on the basis of educational level.

EG = Experimental Group CG = Control Group n = number

Education is one of the most personal variables likely to have a positive impact on acquisition of knowledge by the respondents and development of attitude and practices by them. Hence in the present study sampled mothers were distributed on the basis of educational level for the personal child care hygiene counselling intervention programme. These mothers were further classified into two groups in such a way that they could be matched. Out of these 300 mothers, 153 mothers were selected and treated as the experimental group for intervention and the other 147 as the control group.

Educational level wise distribution of the selected mothers in the sub sample shown in the table 1 indicates that most of 136 mothers had educational status up to secondary level. Followed by 57 had up to higher secondary school level, 47 up to primary school level, 36 up to under graduate (UG) level, 19 up to graduate /post graduate (PG) level. Only 5 mothers were illiterate in the counselling intervention programme.

Impact of Personal Child Care Hygiene Counselling

Table 2: Impact of Counselling Intervention on Personal Child Care Hygiene Knowledge of the Mothers.

Table 3: Impact of Counselling Intervention on Attitude of the Mothers towards Personal Child Care Hygiene of the preschool children.

Table 4: Impact of Counselling Intervention on Practices of the Mothers towards Personal Child Care Hygiene of the preschool children.

EG=Experimental Group   CG= Control Group   n=number

*Significant at 5% level (p-value < 0.05)

Figure 1: Impact of Counselling Intervention on Personal Child Care Hygiene Knowledge of the Mothers.

Figure 2: Impact of Counselling Intervention on Attitude of the Mothers towards Personal Child Care Hygiene of the preschool children.

Figure 3: Impact of Counselling Intervention on Practices of the Mothers towards Personal Child Care Hygiene of the preschool children.

Children do not have the knowledge or skills to take care of their personal hygiene. Therefore, parents need to oversee their habits. In the present study personal child care hygiene of preschool children counselling was imparted to the mothers of experimental group. The topics included in the counselling were importance of regular bathing, washing child hands with soap before and after meals and after she/he defecated, cutting the nails, changing the clothes, washing the hair and washing child face and eyes, eating in the clean place, use a handkerchief during sneezing, use clean and safe water for drinking.

The personal child care hygiene knowledge, attitude and practices level of the mothers in the experimental group and control group was assessed after the intervention programme. Observed data related to personal child care hygiene knowledge, attitude and practices level of the mothers has been presented in table 2, 3, 4 and figure 1, 2, 3. The data showed that in the present study maximum number of the poor and fair scorer mothers had upgraded personal child care hygiene knowledge, attitude and practices score to the upper levels i.e. fair and good levels. This shift was appreciable observed in the experimental group after imparting personal child care hygiene counselling. While in the control group a significant improvement was not observed.

The overall performance was appreciable in the post assessment of the experimental group. The increase in personal child care hygiene knowledge attitude and practices score level of the mothers was good and statistically significant at 5 percent level (p-value < 0.05). Thus it is overall concluded as from the Chi-square test, there is an improvement in the experimental groups due to the impact of personal child care hygiene counselling intervention programme.

Here researcher is interested to test that whether personal child care hygiene counselling significantly improved knowledge, attitude and practice score of the mothers towards preschool children after the counselling intervention. From the above results, it is overall concluded as knowledge, attitude and practice score level of the mothers in the experimental group was appreciable improved and statistically significant at 5 percent level (p-value < 0.05). From the Chi-square test, it also concluded that there is an improvement in the experimental groups due to the impact of the personal child care hygiene counselling intervention programme.

The research confirms the indispensability of counselling mothers on personal child care hygiene especially in the view of pivotal role mother plays in preschool children age group who are our future capable citizens. The research therefore, recommended that, there is need to provide personal child care hygiene education to mothers by experts which will go a long way in improving children personal child care hygiene status.

1. Khinda PK, Mahajan R, Gill AS, Uppal RS, Kaur J, Shewale A, et al. Assessment of preventive dental care among dental students and dental professionals in India: A knowledge, attitude, and practice study. Saint Int Dent J. 2015; 1: 105- 111.
2. Curtis VA, Danquah LO, Aunger RV. Planned, motivated and habitual hygiene behavior: an eleven-country review. Health Educ Res. 2009; 24: 655-73.
3. Postma L, Getkate I, Vanwijk C. Life Skill Based Hygiene Education; International water and Sanitation Centre. 2004.
4. Patel R. Improving Child Nutrition, the Achievable Imperative for Global Progress. UNICEF. 2020; 10: 36-38.
5. WHO (2017).
6. Curtis V, Cairncross S. Effect of washing hands with soap on diarrhoea risk in the community: a systematic review. Lancet Infect Dis. 2003; 3: 275-281.
7. Fewtrell L, Kaufmann RB, Kay D, Enanoria W, Haller L, Colford JM. Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Interventions to Reduce Diarrhea in Less Developed Countries. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. The Lancet Infectious Disease. 2005; 5: 42-52.
8. Ibrahim HA. Mothers knowledge of child health matters: Are we during enough? Journal of family and community medicine. 2010; 17: 22-28.
9. Kiranpreet K, Grover K, Kaur N. Assessment of Nutrition Knowledge of Rural Mothers and Its Effectiveness in Improving Nutritional Status of Their Children. Indian Res J Ext Edu. 2015; 15.
10. Bornstein MH, Bradley RH. Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development. New York: Routledge. 2012.
11. Huang KY, Caughy MOB, Genevro JL, Miller TL. Maternal knowledge of child development and quality of parenting among white, African-American and Hispanic mothers. J Applied Developmental Psychology. 2005; 26: 149-170.
12. Curenton SM, Justice LM. African American and Caucasian pre-schoolers’ use of decontextualized language: Literate language features in oral narratives. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. 2004; 35: 240-253.
13. Gardner-Neblett N, Pungello EP, Iruka IU. Oral narrative skills: Implications for the reading development of African American children. Child Development Perspectives. 2012; 6: 218-224.
14. Grusec JE. Socialization processes in the family: Social and emotional development. Annual Review of Psychology. 2011; 62: 243-269.