Abstract
ABSTRACTProblems in growth and undernutrition manifest in early infancy, with suboptimal breastfeeding and inadequate complementary feeding remaining strong risk factors for chronic undernutrition in infants. No published studies exist on educational interventions to improve infant feeding practices among refugees or displaced persons in low and middle-income (LMIC) settings. The objective of this study was to create and pilot educational materials for home-based counseling of refugee mothers along the Thailand–Myanmar border to improve appropriate infant feeding and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) behaviors. Mothers of infants received counseling on appropriate infant feeding and WASH practices on a monthly basis for a total of six months from infant age three months until nine months. Educational materials were designed to feature a basic script for health workers and photos of locally available, appropriate foods. Of the 20 mothers participating in this pilot, infant feeding and WASH behaviors improved within 1 to 2 months of the first visit, including exclusive breastfeeding, minimum acceptable diet, and safe disposal of infant stool. This pilot demonstrates improvement in maternal infant feeding and WASH practices in a small set of refugee mothers, providing evidence for counseling measures to improve infant health in vulnerable populations.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00840502.
Highlights
Recent analyses reveal that problems in growth and undernutrition manifest in early infancy [1,2,3,4]
No published studies exist on educational interventions to improve infant feeding practices among refugees or displaced persons in low and middle-income (LMIC) settings
This pilot was conducted with recently delivered women attending the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) clinic in Mae La refugee camp (MLA) from October 2013 to June 2014
Summary
Recent analyses reveal that problems in growth and undernutrition manifest in early infancy [1,2,3,4]. Suboptimal breastfeeding and inadequate complementary feeding remain strong risk factors for chronic undernutrition in infants [1]. There is a growing number of studies demonstrating benefit and impact of counseling and educational interventions to improve breastfeeding and complementary feeding for infant nutrition [5,6,7,8,9,10]. No published studies exist on educational interventions to improve infant feeding practices among refugees or displaced persons in low and middle-income (LMIC) settings. This study piloted home-based, one-on-one counseling for a largely illiterate population of refugee mothers in Mae La refugee camp in Thailand to validate potentially, effective counseling techniques for improved maternal infant feeding and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices. This paper highlights methods and materials used for the counseling intervention and reports the results of the pilot
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