Knowledge Regarding Selected Neonatal Infections and their Prevention among Primigravida Mothers

Background and Objective: Among the almost 3.9 million newborn deaths that occur worldwide, about 30% occur in India. Children are our future and utmost precious resources. After birth the health of the child depends upon the health care practice adopted by the family, especially by the mothers. Information about neonatal infection will help in reducing mortality and morbidity during the neonatal period. This study was conducted to identify the knowledge of primi mothers with regard prevention of neonatal infection.

Materials and Methods: This descriptive study was carried out among the mothers of primigravida mother in the Maternity Hospital ,Delhi. The Pre-test was conducted after that The planned teaching programme was conducted . After three days post-test was done using the same questionnaire to evaluate the effectiveness of the planned teaching programme.

Results: Area-wise analysis of knowledge score was more (37.12%) in the area of "Prevention of neonatal GIT infection" and least percentage (26.23%) was in the area of "Neonatal infection in general". The mean percentage of knowledge score of primigravida mothers in the pre-test was 31.71% with a mean ± SD of 10.48±0.91 which was increased after administering a planned teaching programme with a mean percentage of knowledge score in the post-test by 86.33% with a mean ± SD of 28.73 ± 0.84.

Interpretation and Conclusion: Overall findings of assessment of the level of knowledge of the primigravida mothers revealed that 81.52% of the sample had average knowledge, 18.48 % had poor knowledge and none of them had good knowledge regarding prevention of neonatal infection. Quartile distribution of knowledge scores in pre-test and post-test showed significant difference between the knowledge score of pre-test and post-test. This reveals the increase in knowledge level after the administration of PTP. A very high significant (p<0.001) difference was observed between the pre-test and post-test knowledge scores of primigravida mothers regarding prevention of neonatal infection.