Abstract
ObjectiveThis study sought to assess maternal growth monitoring knowledge and its effect on stunting, wasting and underweight among children 0–18 months in the Tamale Metropolis. An analytical cross-sectional study design, involving 340 mother–child pairs randomly selected from 4 health facilities in the Tamale Metropolis was used. A structured questionnaire was used to collect information on socio-demographic characteristics and maternal growth monitoring knowledge. Weight and length of children were taken to assess nutritional status (stunting, underweight and wasting). Chi square/Fisher’s exact test was used to determine the association between maternal growth monitoring knowledge level and child nutritional status.ResultsThe study revealed that 87.6% of mothers had good knowledge on growth monitoring. The prevalence of stunting, underweight and wasting were 9.4%, 25.9% and 17.9% respectively. Bivariate analysis revealed that there is no association between maternal growth monitoring knowledge and stunting (p = 0.781), wasting (p = 0.743) and underweight (p = 0.529) among children 0–18 months in the Tamale Metropolis.
Highlights
Child growth monitoring is aimed at improving and maintaining child health and nutrition [1]
Bivariate analysis revealed that there is no association between maternal growth monitoring knowledge and stunting (p = 0.781), wasting (p = 0.743) and underweight (p = 0.529) among children 0–18 months in the Tamale Metropolis
Malnutrition puts children at greater risk of dying from common infections, increases the frequency and severity of such infections, and delays recovery [5]. It has been established in other settings that poor knowledge on growth monitoring among mothers is associated with poor implementation of growth monitoring [9, 12] which results in high malnutrition rate
Summary
Socio–demographic characteristics of the study sample The mean age of mothers was 29.26 ± 5.64 years with the minimum and maximum ages of 17 and 50 years respectively. Majority of the mothers referred to weighing (80.6%) as the meaning of growth monitoring. Nutritional status of children The mean HAZ, WHZ and WAZ were 0.1 ± 1.7, − 1.08 ± 1.75 and − 0.78 ± 1.4 respectively (Additional file 1). The prevalence of stunting, wasting and underweight were 9.4%, 25.9% and 17.9% respectively (Additional file 2) It was revealed in the present study that stunting and underweight were significantly associated with maternal education (p = 0.008) and age of child (p = 0.003) respectively (Additional file 3).
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