English

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Adequate nutrition during infancy and early childhood is critical to the development of children's full human potential. OBJECTIVE : The main objective was to assess the Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices and associated socio demographic variables among children aged less than two years in rural areas METHODS: A community based, cross sectional descriptive study was done during Sept 09-Aug 2010 which is the rural field practice area of Shri. B. M. Patil Medical College SBMPMC. The data was computed and analyzed using SPSS statistical package (version 13.0). RESULTS: During the study period 264 mothers of infants and young children interviewed with the questionnaire and 159 out of 264 had received prelacteal feeds (males 64 % and females56.3 %). Illiterate mothers (69.7%) practiced more prelacteal feeding than the literate mothers (54.6%). 36% received exclusive breast feeding for a period six months. Majority of the illiterate mothers were practicing early (31.4%) and delayed weaning (32.5%).Poor socioeconomic status, illiteracy, birth spacing and cultural beliefs had significant effect on infant and young children feeding practices. CONCLUSIONS: The study re-emphasized the need for conducting continued infant and child feeding intervention programmes especially for the mother during antenatal and postnatal INTRODUCTION: Adequate nutrition during infancy and early childhood is critical to the development of children's full human potential. Poor Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices, coupled with high rates of infectious diseases, are the proximate causes of malnutrition during the first two years of life. The second half of an infant's first year is an especially vulnerable time, when breast milk alone is no longer sufficient to meet his or her nutritional requirements and complementary feeding should start 1. Of the 19 million infants in the developing world who have low birth weight (< 2,500 grams), 8.3 million are in India. This means that approximately 43 per cent of all the world's infants who are born with a low birth weight are born in India. Malnutrition is an underlying cause in up to 50 per cent of all under- five deaths. About 55 million, or one-third, of the world's underweight children under age five live in India.