English

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Breast feeding plays an essential and sometimes underestimate role in the treatment and prevention of infant and childhood illness. Improving breast feeding is a highly feasible and cost effective approach to reducing the number of infant who die from infectious disease and malnutrition early in their lives. Continuing to breastfeed alone could save 1 to 1.5 million lives a year. Well over 40% of 10.9 million deaths annually occur due to inappropriate feeding practices , during the 1 st year of life. Lack of breast feeding and especially exclusive breast feeding during the 1 st year of life are important risk factors for infant and child hood morbidity and mortality that are only compounded by inappropriate complementary feeding . Current evidence that Breast feeding is beneficial for infant and child health is based on exclusive observational studies. The experimental intervention increased the duration and degree of breast feeding. These results provide a solid scientific under planning for future interventions to promote Breast feeding. Breast feeding practices appear to be ineffective even in institutions due to lack of knowledge of importance of breast milk , colostrums, and pre-lacteal feeds. In the present study an effort is made to assess the knowledge of breast feeding practices among post natal women and mothers attending immunization clinic . OBJECTIVES: To study the sociodemografic factors influence on breast feeding behavior of post natal mothers and to study the awareness of benefits of colostrums, and effect of media on breast feeding practices. MATERIALS AND METHODS : The present study is a cross- sectional, Descriptive Hospital based ,conducted in the post natal ward at Govt Maternity Hospital, sultan Bazar, Hyderabad, A.P., participants are the Mothers who have delivered within 3days of interview, and the Mothers attending immunization clinic , having children below 1 year of age . sample size is 150 Post Natal Mothers and 100 mothers attending immunization clinic in the same hospital selected by simple random sampling technique. METHODOLOG Y: interview with a predesigned and pretested semi structured questionnaire administered to 150 randomly selected mothers at the bed side in post natal ward who have delivered 3days prior to the interview. A friendly support was maintained to elicit the response regarding breast feeding practices. the mothers were interviewed in their mother tongue. Study was conducted from November 1 st to December 2004.study variables includes social demographic factors like age, marriage, age at pregnancy, social status, literacy, and their relation to awareness on breast feeding practices etc.