IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v43y1996i11p1579-1590.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health, hygiene and maternal education: Evidence from The Gambia

Author

Listed:
  • Barrett, Hazel
  • Browne, Angela

Abstract

The paper explores the ways in which women's education influences domestic hygiene practices and use of health care services in a traditional agricultural village in The Gambia. The "environment of health" is one of poverty, high morbidity and low levels of female literacy. A detailed household survey was undertaken in the rainy season when agricultural work is demanding of people's time and energy and morbidity rates are high. Mothers with and without formal education and with at least one child under 5 were included in the study. Small differences were found between the educated and uneducated group in the knowledge and practice of household hygiene. The healthcare services in the village were utilised by all women regardless of whether or not they had been to school, but educated mothers appeared to have a better understanding of health education messages. The case study illustrates the synergy between health, hygiene and maternal education and discusses the implications of the findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Barrett, Hazel & Browne, Angela, 1996. "Health, hygiene and maternal education: Evidence from The Gambia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 43(11), pages 1579-1590, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:43:y:1996:i:11:p:1579-1590
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(96)00054-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dixon, Jenna & Luginaah, Isaac & Mkandawire, Paul, 2014. "The National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana's Upper West Region: A gendered perspective of insurance acquisition in a resource-poor setting," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 103-112.
    2. Frost, Michelle Bellessa & Forste, Renata & Haas, David W., 2005. "Maternal education and child nutritional status in Bolivia: finding the links," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 395-407, January.
    3. Heaton, Tim B. & Forste, Renata & Hoffmann, John P. & Flake, Dallan, 2005. "Cross-national variation in family influences on child health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 97-108, January.
    4. Emmy De Buck & Hans Van Remoortel & Karin Hannes & Thashlin Govender & Selvan Naidoo & Bert Avau & Axel Vande Veegaete & Alfred Musekiwa & Vittoria Lutje & Margaret Cargo & Hans‐Joachim Mosler & Phili, 2017. "Approaches to promote handwashing and sanitation behaviour change in low‐ and middle‐income countries: a mixed method systematic review," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(1), pages 1-447.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:43:y:1996:i:11:p:1579-1590. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.