Abstract
Background: Child feeding practices are the major contributors to the growth of children and have a crucial impact on the nutritional status of children. Awareness about the role of breastfeeding and complementary foods along with the knowledge about their nutritional benefits for the development, growth of infants is very important especially in rural areas.
 Objective: To know breastfeeding practices and nutritional status among children with focus on strengthening these practices to improve the health of infants in Uttarakhand.
 Material and Methods: Z-score test for two population proportions was used for specifying the significance level and test P-value was used for comparing the state i.e. Uttarakhand and its districts according to the two divisions namely, Kumaon and Garhwal.
 Results: In Kumaon division, the districts with healthy child feeding practices was observed were Udham Singh Nagar and Bageshwar, whereas in Garhwal division, Haridwar, Pauri Garhwal, and Rudraprayag were the districts with better practices as compared to the whole state. It was also observed that Garhwal division is rated higher than Kumaon division for best child feeding practices adopted while raising children.
 Conclusion: Through this study, it has been concluded that breastfeeding was prevalent in rural women but there lies a scope of improvement in their knowledge pertaining to the feeding practices.
 Keywords: Child Feeding, Breastfeeding, Complementary feeding, Infants, Nutrition, Uttarakhand
Highlights
Malnutrition is one of the biggest health problems the world currently faces, which is responsible for more than 41% of annual deaths in children aged 6 to 24 months
Secondary data was taken from the factsheets from National family Health Survey-4 (2015-16) to compare the feeding practices and nutritional status among children of 13 districts of Uttarakhand which is divided into Kumaon and Garhwal divisions
Children of age under 3 years that were breastfed within one hour of birth (%)” Children of age under 6 months which were exclusively breastfed (%)” Children age 6-8 months who received solid or semi-solid food and breast milk (%)” Breastfeeding children age 6-23 months receiving an adequate diet (%)” Non-breastfeeding children of age 6-23 months who received an adequate diet (%)” Total children of age 6-23 months received an adequate diet (%)44” Children under 5 years who were stunted (%)” Children under 5 years who were wasted (%)” Children under 5 years who were severely wasted (%)” Children under 5 years who were underweight (%)”
Summary
Malnutrition is one of the biggest health problems the world currently faces, which is responsible for more than 41% of annual deaths in children aged 6 to 24 months. Deaths related to malnutrition sums up to approximately 2.3 million [1]. During infancy, feeding practices play a very important role in the growth, development, and health of a child, and are very crucial in the first two years of life [3]. They are very critical to prevent chronic degenerative diseases. The progress in improving infant and young child feeding practices is Ashish Gaur et al, International Journal of Medical and Biomedical Studies (IJMBS)
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