Abstract
Child health and nutrition much depend on the mother’s knowledge and conscious. We measure mother’s nutritional knowledge and practice affecting child health and nutrition in slum areas of Khulna city in Bangladesh. We find that mothers substantially lack nutritional related knowledge, where many cannot even apply nutritional related knowledge in their daily life mainly due to economic affordability of nutrient food and other required health care services. The research also identifies factors affecting nutritional practices in slum households. The research suggests taking measures to increase nutritional knowledge of mothers and to provide nutrient foods and health care services to the disadvantaged pregnant and mothers with newborn babies.
Highlights
The research focuses on socio-economic profile of the respondents and their families, nutritional knowledge and practice level of the surveyed mothers and families and factors influencing nutritional practice score
As slum people are underprivileged in many respects, authority need to design special campaign in the slum areas
11.25 percent mothers apply higher level nutritional related issues in the family which is a serious threat for mother and child health
Summary
Children represent the future of a nation for which their healthy growth and development ought to be a prime concern in all societies. Higher level of mother’s nutritional knowledge and practice reduce the child mortality rate because educated mother are able to provide concern about child’s health and nutrition, exclusive breast feeding and Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF), food processing and preservation, their proper treatment during illness, information relating to vaccination, hygiene, water and sanitation etc. Low levels of education, lack of nutritional knowledge and practices and poor access of health services are the main reasons of malnutrition in Bangladesh. Though most slum dwellers uses pumped water for drinking but poor housing, overcrowding, together with the unhealthy environment due to poor sanitation, pollution and lack of systematic removal of garbage and solid waste and poor access to health care lead to high rates of child illness, malnutrition and food insecurity. To make better children’s wellbeing in impoverished communities, it is necessary to provide more insight on impact of mother’s nutritional knowledge and practices on child health outcomes
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