Abstract
World health organization guideline recommend that continuous frequent and on-demand breast feeding until two years of age and beyond is essential for the child as well as the mother. Breast feeding aids general health, growth and development of the children. This study will Asses knowledge and practice on breast feeding among mothers of children aged less than two years and associated factors in Araka town, Woliat zone,South Ethiopia community based cross sectional study was conduct among 286 mothers in Areka town on May 2018. By using simple random sampling technique1 kebele was selected from 4 kebeles of Areka town and lottery method was used to get required sample size. structured questionnaire was used for collecting data from respondents .The data was analyzed and processed by SPSS window version 18 and presented in the form of percentage, proportions, and narrative sand associations are identified . From the total of 274 mothers, 56.6% of the mothers have good knowledge about the benefits of breast-feeding 43.6% poor knowledge about child breast feeding. From the total of 274,132 (48.2%) have good practice of breast feeding and 142(51.2%) mothers have poor practice of breast feeding. multivariate logistic regression analysis showed mothers of age20-24 and mothers of age 30-34 practiced appropriate breastfeeding less likely than mothers with age greater than 35 years of age. Mothers who attended higher education were more knowledgeable when compared to mothers not attended formal education. Mothers who are government employ are more likely know about importance of breast feed as compared to students. The result of this study demonstrated that more than half of mothers of children under two years of age have good knowledge about benefit of breast feeding and less than half of respondent have good practice of breast feeding. Keywords: Breast feeding, knowledge, practice DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/88-01 Publication date: April 30 th 2021
Highlights
Over two-thirds deaths occurring worldwide during the first year of life children are often associated with inappropriate feeding practices, especially due to sub optimal breast feeding (9).More than 10 million children under the age of five die each year; 41% of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and another 34% in South Asia and the major contributor to their death is poor breastfeeding practices (10)
In order to examine the knowledge of mothers about the benefits of breast-feeding, all there relevant variables were selected and considered as hundred percent, positive responses were scored in respect to the number of participants
The majorities (56.6%) of mothers have good knowledge about benefit of breastfeeding and less than half (48.2) of mothers have good practices on breast feeding. This result is higher than study in Jimma that is 28.9% and 28% knowledge and practice respectively (22).This might be due to currently in Ethiopia both urban and rural HEWs were trained by the help of -Non-Governmental Organization SNNPR (NGO) as well as governmental organization on area optimal breastfeeding practices and how to increase maternal knowledge towards benefit of breast feeding were included like breastfeeding during maternal and child sickness and frequency of eating food during lactation
Summary
More than 10 million children under the age of five die each year; 41% of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and another 34% in South Asia and the major contributor to their death is poor breastfeeding practices (10). In Ethiopia suboptimal breastfeeding practices are the major contributor to an estimated 70,000 infant deaths per year which is 24% of the total infant death annually which can be significantly prevented by nutrition interventions such as breastfeeding for two years or more (12). The Ministry of Health of Ethiopia has tried to enhance the practice of optimal breast feeding practice by developing training manuals and implementation guidelines on breastfeeding; and incorporated it to the primary health care in line with the health extension program but still the practice is far from the global recommendations (14)
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