22-14
MOTHERS AND YOUNG CHILDREN-’UNDER-FIVES’ CLINIC
The first years of life are when a child’s health is most delicate and when good
nutrition, cleanliness, and other protective measures are critical. For this reason,
many health programs conduct special ‘under-fives’ clinics. But as with any other
health activities, unless the approach is adapted to the local situation, problems are
likely to occur.
Two common mistakes:
NOT APPROPRIATE
1. Some under-fives programs focus only on baby
weighing, health education, and preventive measures
such as vaccination. For curative care, mothers
must bring their babies back on a different day. This
separation of prevention and cure is unfortunate.
Most mothers are busy or have to come a long way
to the health center. For many, it is difficult to bring
their babies one day for weighing and another day for
treatment.
NOT APPROPRIATE
Use of unnecessary medicines to
attract mothers to the program for
preventive activities.
2. Other under-
fives programs use
curative medicine as a
‘magnet’. They attract
Separation of curative cate and
prevention.
mothers to monthly
baby weighings by giving away colorful cough syrups,
diarrhea ‘plugs’, or other unnecessary medicines. To
get the free medicines, mothers sometimes tell health
workers that their babies have a cough or diarrhea—
even when they do not. This use of ‘medicine
as a magnet’ is wasteful, dishonest, and creates
dependency- (Giving out free milk is even worse. It
leads mothers to bottle feed rather than breast feed.
See p. 27-31.)
APPROPRIATE
To avoid these mistakes, help health workers
learn to organize under-fives activities in an
appropriate way:
• Deal with preventive, curative, and educational
needs at the same place and time.
• If there are more children than you could attend
on one day, divide them into 2 or more groups and
have them come on different days.
• Do not use either medicine or food giveaways
to attract mothers. Instead, make the
educational activities so exciting that mothers
will not want to miss them.
Prevention and cure logether-but
with limited use of medicines.