ABSTRACT
Background: Diarrhoea is an important communicable disease which can be prevented by proper hygiene and other simple practical measures. We assessed the knowledge, attitude and practices among mothers regarding childhood diarrhoea in a secondary care hospital in Dimapur, Nagaland.Methods: Cross-sectional observational study conducted over a period of one year including 449 mothers in the age group <45 years with atleast one child under 5 years of age using an interviewer administered, pilot tested, semi-structured questionnaire under the following as categories demography, knowledge, attitude and practices.Results: 97.8% had good knowledge regarding causes and prevention of diarrhoea, 65% had good knowledge regarding the management of diarrhoea while 31% mothers had moderate knowledge. 98% mothers had good attitude but only 17.8% had good practice scores. Multivariate regression analysis showed education > class 10 and residence in urban area were significantly associated with good knowledge and education >class 10, age of mothers ≥29 years, employed mothers, family income Rs. ≥28000 were significantly associated with good practice.Conclusions: Good knowledge and attitude regarding diarrhoea prevention and management among our study population did not translate to good practice. These could also be due to the lower knowledge about management of diarrhoea. Widespread prevalence of wrong practices in the community like irrational use of antibiotics could also have resulted in low practice scores. The gaps between knowledge and attitude and practices among the mothers need to be addressed.
ABSTRACT
Objective:To establish a method for the determination of total chloride in oral rehydration salts powder (Ⅲ) by ion chromatography (IC). Methods:The analysis was performed on an IonPac AS 14A (250 mm × 4 mm) column with an IonPac AG 14A (50 mm × 4 mm) guard column and 9mmol·L-1 Na2 CO3 solution as the mobile phase. The flow rate was 1. 0 ml·min-1 with isocratic elution and the sample size was 25 μl. The suppressor was AERS 500(4mm) with 45mA suppression current, and an ECD was used for the detection. The quantity of chloride ion ( Cl-1 ) was calculated by the peak area with an external standard method. Re-sults:The linear range of Cl-1 was 0. 05-20. 00 mg·L-1(r=0. 9999);the recovery was 98. 89％(RSD=0. 56％, n=6). Conclu-sion:The results demonstrated that the method has the advantages of high sensitivity, simple sample pretreatment, promising accuracy and good reliability, which is suitable for the determination of total chloride in oral rehydration salt powder (Ⅲ) .