Community’s perception, experiences and health seeking behavior towards newborn illnesses in Debre Libanos District, North Shoa, Oromia, Ethiopia: Qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Worldwide about 4 million newborns die each year; of which around 600,000 newborns die from series bacterial infections. To reduce newborn death, community based newborn care is being implemented in Ethiopia though its utilization by clients is low. Studies conducted to address perception of the community towards newborn illnesses are limited. Therefore, this study was aimed in exploring community member’s perception, experiences and health seeking behavior towards newborn illnesses. METHODS: A descriptive qualitative study was conducted from March 11– April 7, 2019 in Debre Libanos District, Ethiopia. Study participants were recruited purposively from six kebeles and women delivered within two months prior to data collection were the primary study participants. Five in-depth interviews, seven key informant interviews and three focused group discussions were conducted. Data were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, translated, and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis in Atlas ti.7.1 software package. RESULT: This study found that community members locally diagnose newborn illnesses as sunburn, evil eye, kichitat, megagna, berd, enlarged/dropping of uvula, and common cold from misconceived cause when unspecific types of symptoms are recognized on newborns. For those locally diagnosed newborn illnesses, they primarily prefer traditional medications to manage the illnesses rather than seeking care from health facilities. This study also found that clients seek health care for these newborn illnesses late. They seek care either from traditional or from health facilities when newborns become unable to breast feed, weak and feeling too hot. CONCLUSION: Local newborn illness diagnosis negatively affected health seeking behavior of the community members in that they made them to rely on traditional medications or delay in seeking care from health facilities. This might leads to negative consequences like disability and mortality. Therefore, health care providers and policy makers should design social and behavioral change communication (SBCC) to change community member’s health seeking behavior towards newborn illnesses.