Internet use among parents of asthmatic children in Morocco

Asthma is the most frequent chronic disease among children. Therapeutic education is an important area in the treatment of asthma. Internet is a non-neglectable source of information for parents about this chronic disease. The aim: of this study is to investigate the characteristics of the use of internet by parents in Morocco and to demonstrate its impact on asthma control. Methods: This is a transversal study based on a survey of parents of asthmatic children who have been hospitalized in the Pneumology service or have been seen in consultation at the Children9s Hospital of Rabat. The children who were newly diagnosed with asthma were excluded from this study. Results: A group of 100 parents were involved in the survey.Only 25% of them used internet to get information about asthma. The mean age of children was 6 years old and age limits ranging from 2 to 18 years old. The most researched words were asthma (65%), diqa [asthma in Moroccan Arabic] (19%), and hassasyat sadr [chest sensitivity; also used to refer to asthma] (19%). 100% of the research concerned the radical treatment of asthma, 34% of it dealt with the treatment of the attack, 25% with the definition of asthma, 16% with the long-term treatment and 16% looks for the causes of asthma. The websites consulted were Google (96%) and Youtube (4%). A percentage of 60% of the parents use internet because of the lack of information transmitted by doctors. Conclusion: Since internet has proven to be as a crucial source of information for parents of asthmatic children, we suggest in this study to integrate it in the education of parents by directing them to good websites or creating others that are specifically geared towards providing information about asthma.