| dc.description.abstract | Growth monitoring, particularly of infants and young children, is widely regarded as an essential element of primary health care (de Onis et al. 2004). Growth monitoring and promotion (GMP) is a nutrition intervention that measures and charts the weight of children from zero to five years of age and uses this information to counsel parents so that they take action to improve child growth (WHO, 1986). The broad objective of the study is to assess the knowledge and practice of mothers of the under five children on growth monitoring and suggest possible solutions.
The method or methodology used was a cross sectional descriptive study design which was conducted in Kitgum- District, Labongo –Division in Lamit North and South Parishes. The population sample was 376 and the sampling technique was simple random sampling method.
According to the study, significant impressions were made because majority of the respondents 355 (96%) heard about growth monitoring and were able to answer most of the questions appropriately. However, only 14 out of 376 i.e. (4%) of the respondents never knew about growth monitoring. Thus, the awareness of mothers of children under five was good, only few would ignore the need for growth monitoring because of lack of information, inadequate number of health workers to provide the services and inadequate supplies of the equipments in the side of health workers. Despite the knowledge about growth monitoring and the availability of some of the services offered, the study established that minority of the respondents (4.3%) never had the child health cards. This indicated that there were other factors hindering them from going for growth monitoring, lack of information being the main reason and sometimes the mother said even money for transport is a problem hence failure to attend the clinics.
Conclusion: For growth monitoring to be effective, there should be regular training, resources availability, supervision, management and evaluation in child health services. | en_US |
