Mother’s Handwashing Practices and Health Outcomes of Under-Five Children in Northwest Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Improving handwashing practices of mothers is important in developing countries to reduce child morbidity, mortality, and hygiene-related illnesses. This study aimed to assess mothers handwashing practice and the health effects on under-five children in northwest Ethiopia. METHODS: The study was an institution-based cross-sectional study conducted from November 2018 to January 2019 at the University of Gondar comprehensive specialized hospital. Four hundred and twenty two randomly selected mothers who have had under-five children were included in the study. Structured questioners were developed to assess handwashing practics and sociodemographic characterististics of mothers, and medical history related data of children were extracted from medical charts. Data entry and clearance were performed by Epi-info(TM) version-7 software and exported for analysis to SPSS 22. Adjusted odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval was used to declare statistically significant variables on the basis of p-value < 0.05. RESULTS: The proportion of mothers who practiced good handwashing was 39.1% [95% CI: (34.8–43.9)]. More than half (54.3% and 53.6%) of the mothers indicated that they always remind their children to wash their hands before and after eating, respectively. However, 28% of under-five children were admitted to hospital with a diarrheal disease which may have been due to the poor hand washing practices of their mother. The odds of having good knowledge of handwashing practices were 0.26 times lower. Being married increased the handwashing practices of mothers by 2.62 times. CONCLUSION: The majority of mothers who were knowledgable about handwashing were not executing it accuractely. Diarrheal admissions among under-five children have been influenced by their mother's poor hand washing practices. Therefore, it is imperitive to improve the understanding of proper handwashing practices of mothers at every level in the community.