Publications

Research outputs, reports, policy briefs and knowledge products from KIU scholars and partners.

2023 School of Nursing Sciences INOSR Scientific Research

Attitudes and Practices of Mothers towards Neonatal Umbilical Cord Sepsis in Maternity Ward of Kitagata Hospital, Sheema District.

Namuddu, Rebecca

Globally, it is estimated that over four million newborns die annually from serious neonatalinfections. This study was carried out to find out the attitudes and practices of motherstowards neonatal umbilical cord sepsis in maternity ward of Kitagata Hospital, basing on thefollowing study objectives; the factors associated with neonatal umbilical cord sepsis andthe prevalence of umbilical cord sepsis among neonates in maternity ward of KitagataHospital. The study was conducted at Kitagata Hospital, in Sheema district, employing a crosssectional descriptive design and enrolled all mothers whose neonates were found admittedin the maternity ward and ready to freely participate in the study. A sample size of 96respondents who were selected using a simple random sampling technique was used in thestudy. A pretested, self-administered questionnaire was used as a primary data collectiontool which was filled by the respondents after getting informed consent. All the datacollected was kept confidential by the researcher and was analyzed by the Statistical Packagefor Social Science 17.0 program after which it was presented using tables, pie charts andgraphs. Cross-tabulations were also drawn. Neonatal cord sepsis is still one of the causes ofneonatal morbidity and mortality in Kitagata Hospital with prevalence rate of 29%. Mostmother still have cultural attitudes and practices with 51% traditional medicines used to carefor neonate umbilical cord care. Uganda MOH should increase on health awarenesscampaigns so that many of our newborns do not fall victim of cord sepsis, routine evaluationof neonates and encourage ANC visits.