Background: identify targets to improve mother’s practices for managing fever in children is the first step to reduce the overload healthcare system related to these common symptoms. We aimed to study mother’s knowledge and practice towards fever management, and to identify targets to improve mothers practice for managing fever at home as the first step to reduce childhood mortality.
Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 384 female parents/guardians with children less than five years, data was collected by using structured questionnaires.
Results: Majority of the parents knew the definition of fever where by only fewer didn’t know, most of parent doesn’t know complications which can be caused by fever in children less than five years of age. On fever management and other remedies most of the drug used is paracetamol (77.3%) while others (32.75%) use different drugs such as septrine, ALU, piriton and traditional medicine which is very wrong approach treatment, where by others (32.6%) believe adding more medication can help by others (66.1%) going hospital is best solution if the body temperature doesn’t go low. There are some traditional ways which are used to cool the body where by the majority (82.2%) use cold sponging and others (8.9%) used tepid sponging.
Conclusion: Despite successful educational interventions, little has changed in mothers fever management knowledge and practices. There is need for interventions based on behavior change theories to target the precursor of behavior namely knowledge, attitudes, normative influences mother’s perceptions of control.
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