Strategic actions on the prevention of Acute Respiratory Infections in children less than five years old

Introducción: las infecciones respiratorias agudas constituyen un importante problema de salud, tanto por las impresionantes cifras de morbilidad, como por el elevado índice de mortalidad que provocan.Objetivo: el objetivo de este trabajo es evaluar la efectividad de la aplicación de acciones estratégicas para elevar el nivel de conocimientos sobre la prevención de las infecciones respiratorias agudas en padres o tutores de los niños menores de cinco años.Método: se realizó un estudio de intervención, en el que se aplicaron acciones estratégicas para elevar el nivel de conocimientos sobre la prevención de las infecciones respiratorias agudas (IRA) a 82 padres o tutores de niños menores de cinco años en el municipio Plaza. Venezuela, en el año 2010. La investigación se realizó en tres etapas: diagnóstico, intervención o ejecución y evaluación. Se emplearon métodos teóricos: análisis-síntesis, inductivo-deductivo, e histórico-lógico; empíricos: el consentimiento informado, la observación, la encuesta y el método Delphi para validar las acciones y estadísticos: el método porcentual y la Prueba Anova de Friedman: para medir el nivel de conocimientos antes y después de aplicadas las acciones estratégicas.Introduction: the acute respiratory infections constitute an important health issue, for the high morbidity and mortality index. Objective: the objective of this work is to evaluate the application of the effectiveness of strategic actions to increase the level of knowledge on the prevention of acute respiratory infections in parents or tutors of children less than five years. Method: it was performed an intervention study through which there were applied strategic actions to increase the level of knowledge about the prevention of acute respiratory infections (ARI) to 82 parents or tutors of children under five years old in Plaza municipality, Venezuela, in the year 2010. The research was performed in three stages: diagnosis, intervention or execution and evaluation. There were applied theoretical methods like: analysis- synthesis, induction - deduction, historical and logical; and empirical methods like the informed consent, the observation, survey and the Delphi method to validate the actions and statistics, the percentage method and the Anova test of Friedman to measure the level of knowledge before and after the strategic actions. Results: all the experts considered that the strategic actions were effective to be applied and generalized. At the beginning of the investigation the parents or tutors had a scarce knowledge about the prevention of acute respiratory infections, and after the intervention there was a significant increase of it, for which the strategic actions were effective. Conclusions: the application of strategic actions based on the prevention of Acute Respiratory Infections in children under five years old, allowed the significantly increase of the level of knowledge of parents or tutors