Abstract

The study tiles mother’s knowledge on the causes and prevention of pneumonia in children 0-5years was carried out in the Bomaka Community which is located in the Fako division in the South West Region of Cameroon from January 2020 with the objective access mother’s knowledge on the causes and prevention of pneumonia.

A sample size of 200women in the Bomaka Community was selected using continent sampling technique and a quantitative cross-sectional study was used. Instrument used to carry out the study was a well structure questionnaire and data was analyzed using Microsoft excel 2010.

The result obtained as regard definition of pneumonia was 150(75%), of the respondent defined pneumonia as “ a disease caused by cold, while 50(25%) define pneumonia as a lungs infection involving the lungs alveoli (air sacs) and can be caused by microbes including; bacteria, virus or fungi. Again 70(35%), stated they don’t know the cause of pneumonia, while 60(30%) said cold , and 65(32%) which are minority of the respondent stated at least one of the causes of pneumonia which include; bacteria, virus, fungi and aspiration.

Furthermore, 90(45%) out of 200 respondents did not give any preventive measure, while 70(35%) gave wearing of warm cloths, 40(20%) of the respondent stated at least one of the preventive measures of pneumonia which follows; proper nutrition, vaccination, exclusive breast feeding, avoiding crowding.

This study will go a long way to improve mother’s knowledge on the causes and prevention of pneumonia in children and also go a long way to increase the researcher’s knowledge on pneumonia. To conclude, majority of the mothers had a low knowledge on the causes and prevention of pneumonia. The researcher recommended that similar study should be carried out to other communities.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Pneumonia is an inflammation of the lungs caused by bacteria, viruses, or chemical irritants. It is a serious infection or inflammation in which the air sacs fill with pus and other liquid. This chapter presents the background of the study, problem statements, objectives, research questions, significant of the study, scope of study, definitions of terms.

1.1 Background

Pneumonia which is the inflammation of the lung caused by bacteria, virus, or fungi (CDC; 2014), pneumonia was first described by Hippocrates (460-370BC). The first descriptions of its clinical and pathological features were made 22 centuries later in 1819 by Laennec (Laennec R, et a., 1883). While Rokitansky in 1842 was the first to differentiate lunar and bronchopneumonia. During the next 47years at least 28 terms listed in the Manual of the International List of Causes of Death had grown to 94, with 12 sub-terms.

The ICD-10 classification of diseases has removed some of the historical descriptive terms and ‘pneumonia ‘ is listed as the primary term in seven codes(J12-18) but it is also a descriptive term in seven other codes relevant to specific infectious and non-infectious aetiologies, times of life and complications of diseases and procedures  (WHO, 2016). ICD-10 codes usually include subcategories  so there are still  many classifications for pneumonia. It is also of note that ‘ other acute lower respiratory infections ‘ comprise three other codes (J20-22) for acute bronchitis, bronchiolitis and unspecified conditions.

Harrison’s textbook of internal medicine defines pneumonia as an infection of the pulmonary parenchyma caused by various organisms. It states that pneumonia is not a single disease but a group of specific infections, each with a different epidemiology, pathogenesis, presentation and clinical course (Levison et a., 2011). Harrison’s textbook describes the pathologic demarcation between lobar and bronchopneumonia but concludes that the classification of pneumonia is best based upon a causative microorganism.

The textbook also describes that the specific microbial aertiology remains unknown in more than a third of patients, although it is common in children for a blood culture to be the only test performed to provide a specific diagnosis, which may only be positive in 5-10% of patients and up to 20% in the most severely I’ll patients (Cassol, et a., 2012). The lack of accepted, widely understood and commonly used definitions for pneumonia causes a fundamental problem where related but heterogeneous pathologies and clinical phenotypes are poorly classified. The lack of clear classification results in difficulty which clinical decision making and a potential for poorly formulated research.

The magnitude of this problem is most evident in the common inability to identify the infectious organisms causing lung infection, necessitating empiric antibiotics therapy. If a specific diagnosis could be made, specific therapy could be provided which would be of similar efficacy to empiric wide spectrum therapy (Janses, et a., 2005) and avoid millions of prescriptions of broad-spectrum antibiotics and the associated risks of antibiotic resistant. The magnitude of the problem is less evident in the field of pneumonia research. In a quantitative sense, the problem may be distilled to a lack of homogeneity in clinical and psychological phenotypes under investigation.

In studies of heterogeneous groups, the research problems that may arise include an inability  to determine aetiology due to a limited  range of methods; pathology  or microbiology with desparate patterns; and conflicting results between studies that investigate risk factors, diagnostic methods and treatments. Heterogeneous groups may result in desperate and unfocused studies, which fail to target the most important types of pneumonia and the most important questions, and make limited contributions. In epidemiologic terms, investigation of heterogeneous groups will, to a lesser or greater extent, threaten the internal validity of studies.

When heterogeneous groups are studied, invalid estimates of effect occur due to misclassification bias (Rothman et a., 2011). In the field of pneumonia research, determining aetiology is a common difficulty.  For example, in the absence of specimens from the lung, studies of aetiology mau misclassify causality to organisms detected in nasopharyngeal or sputum samples- in the situation, misclassification bias occurs due to the difficulty in accurately determining the aetiology of lung infections.

 1.2 Problem Statement

Pneumonia is a common illness affecting approximately 400 million people a year in all part of the world and the incidence of childhood pneumonia is much greater in developing countries than in developed countries (Fischer Walker et al., 2013). In 2018, pneumonia occurred in approximately 156 million children with 151 million in developing countries and 5 million in the developed world (Ruuskanen et al., 2011).

Again in 2013, 6 million children under five years old died worldwide,   with nearly 17000 a day (WHO, 2013). In 2016, pneumonia accounted for approximately 16% of 5.6 million under five death, killing about 880000 children (UNICEF, 2016). Nevertheless,  during my internships, cases of pneumonia where been identify which led to the death of two pediatric patients which motivated me the researcher to carry out a research on mother’s knowledge on the causes and prevention of pneumonia in children.

 1.3 Objectives

 1.3.1 General objectives 

To assess mother’s knowledge on the causes and prevention of pneumonia in children from zero to five years.

 1.3.2 Specific objectives

1. To assess mother’s knowledge on pneumonia in children from zero to five years
2. To identify mother’s knowledge on the causes of pneumonia in children from zero to five years
3. To identify mother’s knowledge on the prevention of pneumonia in children from zero to five years.

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