Analysis of Treatment seeking Behaviour f6r Malaria by Mothers and their Morbid Children in Niger State, Nigeria

The study analyzed-treatment seeking behavior of mothers and their morbid malaria children. The sample frame for the study is the total number of children aged between 6 and 59 months in households, along with their birth mothers. A total of 332 children and 375 women were selected for the study. The study used Canonical correlation was used to determine a linear combination for each group of variables in a way that maximizes the correlation between the group of dependent variables considered the children's signs and symptoms for Malaria, and the group of independent variables of the mothers: biophysical; environmental; socioeconomic; and access to health services variables. Three canonical functions were selected, concentrating 86.3% of the variability of the relationship among die groups. In the first canonical function, vomiting/weakness Keywords: Malaria, Treatment-seeking behavior, (0.755); convulsion (0.638) were the signs and symptoms of the malaria Infected Children (MIC), and are directly related to the increasing mothers' umber of children (0.573), deteriorating housing condition of mothers (0.805), low-level education of mothers (0.675), and lower pre-natal consultation of mothers (0.768). In the second canonical function, only the mothers' low-level education (0.545) related to the children’s' high body temperature (0.788) the lower the level of the mother's education, the lower the incidence of high .temperature which is a sign or symptom of malaria. In the third canonical function, the sign and symptoms of high body temperature of children (Q.678) is related directly to mothers low- income level. The study concludes that mothers and children were associated concerning convulsion; vomiting/weakness and high body