Follow-up and evaluation of a flyer on the household management of diarrhea: a study conducted by the Cameroon Diarrheal Disease Control Program.

During May-June 1992 in Cameroon the PRITECH project conducted household surveys in the Northwest Littoral and Extreme North provinces to evaluate the distribution and use of a health education flyer on household management of diarrhea. The flyers had been distributed in December 1991 in the Extreme North province and in February 1992 in the Northwest and Littoral provinces. 55% of those interviewed had seen the flyer mostly in health facilities. Yet church groups and community development officers in the Northwest and Littoral provinces respectively received the flyers for distribution. Few interviewees had seen the flyers at the home of a neighbor parent or friend. Only 12.2% of interviewees had received a flyer. 63% of caregivers who received the flyer and had a child who had a subsequent diarrheal episode referred to the flyer for treatment. Hearing an explanation of the flyer had a greater effect on caregiver knowledge about household management of diarrhea than did only receiving a copy of the flyer. This suggests that training health workers and community workers in health education techniques yields better results than using funds to produce health education materials for mass distribution. The printing cost of each flyer was US$ 0.0857. The cost of developing the pictures and the text was US$ 2000. The pretesting cost was US$ 3000. The printing cost of instructions for distributors of the flyers was US$ 0.27/each. In the Littoral province the distribution cost was about US$ 0.27/flyer 3 times the printing cost. This cost included an educational seminar for community development officers. On the other hand no additional costs related to the distribution of the flyer existed in the Extreme North province. These findings suggest that people charged with distribution and explanation of the flyers should be trained in its contents.