Background: The impact of family support on positive health practices and outcomes cannot be overemphasized especially in families with growing children.

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the impact of family support on the practice of child survival strategies among mothers attending the postnatal clinic of a primary health care centre in south-south Nigeria.

Methodology: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study involving 296 mothers who presented at the postnatal clinic of primary healthcare centre, Itu, South-South Nigeria between March and July, 2019 recruited through convenient sampling. A pre-tested intervener administered questionnaire was used to obtain information on socio-demographic characteristics of the mothers, practice of child survival strategies (CSS) and family support to practice CSS.

Result: The age of the respondents ranged from 15 -49 years, with mean and standard deviation of 28.18±7.07 years. From the result obtained, greater percentage (87.5%) of the mothers belonged to lower reproductive age (<35 years), had higher (secondary and tertiary) educational status (88.51%), had lower income (56.76%) and were of lower parity (88.51%). Lower percentage of the mothers practiced most of the components of CSS as seen in 26.69% (growth monitoring), 37.5% (oral rehydration therapy), 42.28% (complete childhood immunization) and 48.99% (environmental sanitation). However, majority of the respondents (79.05%) who practiced CSS had support from family members; moreover 64.19% of them had adequate support, even though there was no significant statistical association between practice of CSS and family support.

Conclusion:  The study has shown that even though the percentage of the mothers who practiced CSS was low in most of the components of CSS, most of the respondents who practiced CSS had adequate support from the family members. We  recommend that information, education and counseling on the practice of CSS be made available not only to the mothers but also to other family members so as to ensure their involvement and adequate support to mothers in the practice of CSS, with the attendant benefits of averting child morbidity and mortality.

Keywords: Impact, family support, child survival strategies, mothers, south-south Nigeria.

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Dr Victory Iyanam

Department of Family Medicine, UNIUYO, Nigeria