Evaluation of social marketing of oral rehydration therapy.

ABSTRACT

PIP: Researchers interviewed 149 mothers from the slums of East Delhi, India who knew about oral rehydration therapy (ORT) to evaluate the effectiveness of the Ministry of Health's mass media campaign to promote ORT use during diarrheal episodes. As of September 1991, India has distributed oral rehydration solution (ORS) packets free of charge. The Ministry of Health has conducted the campaign since 1989. They compared the 59 mothers who watched the television (TV) ads with celebrities delivering simple and clear images to the 90 mothers who had received ORT messages from other sources such as health workers. Mothers who watched the TV ads were considerably more likely to know how to correctly prepare ORS than those who learned about ORT from other sources (62.7% vs. 37.7%; p.01). No significant difference in use of ORT at home between the 2 groups existed, however (69.49% and 53.33%, respectively). Yet when the mothers were divided by educational status, they learned that TV ads were more likely to teach educated mothers how to correctly prepare and to use ORT at home than health staff (81.5% vs. 35.5% and 81.5% vs. 41.9%, respectively; p.01). Most mothers (88.13% and 81.11%, respectively) in both groups still fed their child during diarrheal episodes. TV ads and health staff were equally effective for both educated and uneducated women. These results showed that social marketing of ORS packets via the TV ads was successful in increasing ORT acceptability, knowledge, use, and especially among educated mothers. Similar studies in Bangladesh showed that education incites changes in attitude and behavior of mothers which makes them more receptive of new knowledge and modern medicine. Another possibility for the education difference may be that TV was better able to interest educated mothers than health staff.