Diarrhea is a common illness and a leading cause of malnutrition and death in under five children of developing countries(1). Child-care practices including personal and domestic hygiene play an important role in diarrhea prevention.

A cross-sectional, community based, observational study was undertaken in a suburban area of Kolkata, to study the role of child care personnel in occurrence of diarrhea. Municipal records showed 40% diarrhea prevalence among under fives in the study area during two weeks time. Based on this a sample size of 300 was estimated, and the subjects were selected by systematic random sampling technique.

The study population showed a diarrhea incidence of 31.67% in a two week recall period, which was much higher than the figure reported in children under three years of age, by NFHS 2 in West Bengal(2). The incidence of diarrhea was inversely proportional to the increase in educational level of the mother, this difference being strongly significant (P <0.005). Incidence of diarrhea increased with the increase of income levels of their families (P <0.05). Diarrhea cases were significantly more (P <0.001) among under five children of working mothers. Children who were looked after by their mothers showed least incidence of diarrhea, followed closely by those looked after by trained outside nurse. Children who were cared for by untrained outsider suffered the most. This trend was strongly significant (P <0.005). Exclusively, breast-fed infants showed least incidence of diarrhea, followed by spoon fed and bottle fed ones. Those who were fed by hand showed a very high diarrhea incidence, which was significantly more than that among exclusively breast fed babies (P < 0.01).

1. Ghai OP, Gupta P. Essential Preventive Medicine: A Clinical and Applied Orientation. 1999. Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.

2. National Family Health Survey 1998-1999, India 2001; International Institute for population Sciences, Mumbai.