Knowledge and attitude towards exclusive breast feeding among postnatal mothers in a tertiary care teaching hospital-an institution based cross sectional study

Abstract

Background: Exclusive breast feeding (EBF) is termed as an optimal strategy for feeding newborns and as per WHO should start within the first one hour of delivery and must continue up to 6 months of infant’s age, as the only source of nutrition and fluids for babies at that age. Unfortunately, a report estimated in 2012 that, only 35% of infants were exclusively breastfed globally. This stresses the need to educate and motivate mothers to exclusively breastfeed their babies for the first six months of life.Methods: Knowledge and attitude towards EBF, of postnatal mothers admitted to a tertiary care teaching hospital was assessed using a self-administered questionnaire and their responses analysed using statistics software.Results: From our study we found that, based on knowledge score, 88 (69.8%) of the respondents had good knowledge and 38 (30.2%) of the study participants were categorized as having poor knowledge. Based on the attitudinal score, 17 (14%) of the study participants were categorized as having negative attitude towards EBF and 108 (86%) were categorized as having positive attitude towards EBF. Conclusions: Health care providers working in the areas of maternal and child health (MCH), should evaluate mothers’ knowledge and attitude for EBF, every visit by asking questions related to EBF. IEC activities related to EBF should be promoted to disseminate knowledge regarding EBF. Breast feeding support groups should be established to help motivate mothers to exclusively breast feed their babies for the first six months of life.