Understand the meaning of basic sanitation practices - hygiene - and identification of warning signs to seek timely care for danger signs of acute respiratory infection and acute diarrheal disease, for caregivers of children under five years of age, of the Villa Santana - Pereira commune, within the framework of the community component of the IMCI strategy, in 2013. Method: Qualitative study. Eighteen interviews, a focus group and observation guides carried out in the caregivers' homes were applied and analyzed about the knowledge, practice and the assessment that is given to practice. Results: In the information / knowledge of the practices by the caregivers, there are different types of beliefs according to the categories of analysis that guide the inquiry in the investigative process. In the spaces of social interaction, people's beliefs arise, as a result of experience and direct observation, of inferential processes or from information. The institutional information is combined in the daily with the knowledge and the experience obtained on health care; In the context of the social structure where people develop, it is thus that when faced with contact with the disease, the use of what has been learned in the family and social environment precedes the care of modern medicine. Conclusion: In the reality of daily life, the application of the practices under study by the caregivers arises from different types of beliefs learned in social interaction in the face of contact and experience with the disease.