Practicum Summary:

Assessing Health Knowledge and Practices in Households for Childhood Pneumonia

Sivna Oun’s research practicum assesses the effectiveness of World Relief’s “Light for Life” Child Survival Project in the Chey Nikum and Chipaing Health Center catchment area in Ponhea Kriek-Dombe Operationa District and Kampong Cham Province, Cambodia. During the course of the Child Survival Project, 318 Care Groups with 2490 village volunteers were created to perform education and community mobilization to prevent sickness, including childhood pneumonia. Among the 16 health centers in the project area, two of them were randomly selected as research sites for the knowledge, diagnosis and treatment of childhood pneumonia. Oun found that the overall percentage of mothers who correctly used antibiotics to treat their child for pneumonia increased by 3.2%; the final survey showed that among the children who were sick and treated with pneumonia, none died over the last 8 months of program implementation due to the positive impact of the Child Survival Project.