Koul, P. B., Murali, M. V., Gupta, P., & Sharma, P. P. (1991). Evaluation of social marketing of oral rehydration therapy
Abstract
Evaluation of social marketing of oral rehydration therapy.
Researchers interviewed 149 mothers from the slums of East Delhi, India whoknew about oral rehydration therapy (ORT) to evaluate the effectiveness of the Ministry of Health's massmedia campaign to promote ORT use during diarrheal episodes. As of September 1991, India has distributedoral rehydration solution (ORS) packets free of charge. The Ministry of Health has conducted the campaignsince 1989. They compared the 59 mothers who watched the television (TV) ads with celebrities deliveringsimple and clear images to the 90 mothers who had received ORT messages from other sources such as healthworkers. Mothers who watched the TV ads were considerably more likely to know how to correctly prepareORS than those who learned about ORT from other sources (62.7% vs. 37.7%; p.01). No significant differencein use of ORT at home between the 2 groups existed, however (69.49% and 53.33%, respectively). Yet whenthe mothers were divided by educational status, they learned that TV ads were more likely to teach educatedmothers 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 fedtheir child during diarrheal episodes. TV ads and health staff were equally effective for both educatedand uneducated women. These results showed that social marketing of ORS packets via the TV ads was successfulin increasing ORT acceptability, knowledge, use, and especially among educated mothers. Similar studiesin Bangladesh showed that education incites changes in attitude and behavior of mothers which makes themmore receptive of new knowledge and modern medicine. Another possibility for the education differencemay be that TV was better able to interest educated mothers than health staff.