Abstract

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Background & objectives:�Studies show the children attending child care centers in comparison with children under family care acquire infectious diseases 2 to 3 times higher. This study aimed to investigate the incidence and symptoms of respiratory and GI infections in preschool children at child day care centers and family care in Ardabil.

Methods: This research is a retrospective cross-sectional study. The data were collected based on parental reports during one year. Tools for data collection were a questionnaire consisted of two parts: demographic characteristics and information about symptoms of infectious diseases. Subjects were parents of 600 children aged 3 to 6 years were selected by stratified-random sampling method from 20 day care and 20 health care centers. The home day care children were selected from health care centers in neighborhood day care centers. For data analysis descriptive and analytical statistical methods such as χ² were used by SPSS V.16.
Results: Findings showed 99.3 percent of day care centers’ children and 97.7 percent of children in family care have experienced common cold at least one time. The average number of infections in day care centers’ children was 5.3± 0.18 which was more than children in family care with the mean 3.40± 0.1. There were significant differences between two groups in sputum and dyspnea, hospitalization related to respiratory infections, diarrhea, and hospitalization related to diarrhea (p<0.05). There were no significant differences between two groups in symptoms of coughing, fever, and sore throat and eye infections.

Conclusion: Occurrence of some infectious diseases including respiratory and digestive system infections among children in day care is high.

Keywords: Preschool Children, Day Care Center, Infectious Illnesses.