Maternal education, self-reported illness concepts, health-seeking behaviours and breastfeeding practices of rural Nigerian market women

Abstract

: Child mortality from infectious diseases is still high in Nigeria. Appropriate illness concepts (IC), healthseeking behaviours (HSB) and breastfeeding practices (BFP) of mothers are critical to addressing child mortality arising from infectious diseases. This study seeks to determine the relationship between mothers’ formal education and IC, HSB, BFP, family structure and parity, in market women in rural Plateau State, Nigeria, with a view to making policy recommendations from the data. A total of 993 women from three rural markets in Plateau State were effectively recruited and studied. A structured questionnaire was used to elicit information from the women. Appropriate descriptive and inferential statistical tools were used for data analyses. About 70% of the women had received some formal education while 62.4% of them reported an infectious disease in their homes within the month prior to the study. Exclusive breastfeeding for more than 6 months was practiced by 78% of the population. Almost all the mothers had appropriate IC (99%) and proper HSB (92%). Whereas length of formal education was significantly and negatively correlated with age of mother (r = −0.525; p < 0.001), number of children (r = −0.213; p < 0.001) and family structure (r = −0.494; p < 0.001), it was not significantly correlated with IC, HSB or BFP. Informal modes of education are apparently critical to the dissemination of messages related to proper IC, HSB and BFP among rural market women, and are thus recommended.

Keywords:

• breastfeeding
• education
• healthseeking behaviour
• illness concepts
• women

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.