Does mobilisation help change mothers' behaviour towards health and nutrition?

Abstract

A study was done to assess the impact of mobilization on the change of mothers' behaviour towards health and nutrition practices. Mobilization was given by adolescent girls trained on various aspects of health and nutrition. Like regular growth monitoring of their children, immunization, colostrums feeding, complementary feeding, night blindness, hookworm infestation and hand washing practices before eating and after defecation. The adolescent girls were trained in BRAC non-formal schools in some villages of Muktagachha Upazila of Mymensingh district. They made house to house visits and mobilized and motivated the mothers on the above subjects. Mothers living in neighbouring areas but not visited by the ·adolescent girls were considered as non-mobilized. Results show that mobilization has important effects on some aspects of health and nutrition behaviour such as age at which complementary feeding should be started, vegetables as sources of vitamin A nightblindness, and personal hygiene like hand washing practice before eating. However, no significant difference was found between mobilized and non-mobilized mothers in respect of importance of growth monitoring, immunization, colostrum feeding and washing of hand after defecation. The reason for this is not know at present but it may be due to weakness of the mobilization procedure/programme, leakage of information from mobilized mothers to non-mobilized mothers, or gaining of knowledge by the non-mobilized mothers from other source like radio and TV. Further in-depth study is needed to resolve the question.