A study of 600 rural under-five mothers' knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) in child care was performed in 4 southern provinces of Vietnam. The mothers were randomly selected and interviewed about sociodemographic factors, health seeking behaviour, and practice of home care of children and neonates. 93.2% of the mothers were literate and well-educated, which has been shown to be important for child health care. 98.5% were married suggesting a stable family, which is also of importance for child health. Only 17.3% had more than 2 children in their family. The mother was the main caretaker in 77.7% of the families. Only 1% would use quacks as their first health contact, but 25.2% would use a private clinic, which therefore eases the burden on the government system. Nearly 69% had given birth in a hospital, 27% in a commune health station, and only 2.7% at home without qualified assistance. 89% were giving exclusive breast feeding at 6 months, much more frequent than in the cities. The majority of the mothers could follow IMCI guideline for home care, although 25.2% did not deal correctly with cough and 38.7% did not deal correctly with diarrhoea. Standard information about Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) based home care is still needed.

Background and AimIrritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is associated with repetitive gastrointestinal symptoms that greatly reduce the patient's quality of life (QoL). Training regarding IBS‐related knowledge, medication adherence, lifestyle, and diet adjustments has been demonstrated to strengthen patient QoL. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention carried out by clinical pharmacists to improve the QoL of patients with IBS.MethodsOur research included data collected at the University Medical Center, Ho Chi Minh City, from April 2018 to December 2018, and was designed as a randomized controlled clinical trial. Patients with IBS were randomized into an intervention group (IG) and nonintervention group (NIG). The intervention program included training about IBS‐related knowledge, the importance of medication adherence, symptom recognition, lifestyle, and diet adjustments. Participants were followed up by monthly telephone calls. The outcome was the change in patient QoL scores (IBS‐QoL) 8 weeks after they took part in the research.ResultsOf 273 patients in the trial, there were 132 patients in the IG cohort and 141 in the NIG cohort. At 8 weeks, IG QoL score changes were statistically higher than those of NIG: 20.1 ± 12.1 (IG) versus 13.2 ± 13.4 (NIG). Furthermore, pharmacist intervention played an important role in increasing QoL after 8 weeks, as confirmed by multivariate regression analysis (B = 5.9; 95% confidence interval 2.4–9.4, P = 0.001).ConclusionsPatient education, lifestyle, and dietary intervention, administered by clinical pharmacists, improves IBS‐QoL compared to standard medical therapy over 8 weeks.