Knowledge Attitude and Practices regarding complimentary Feeding in mothers of children between 6- 24 months in and around Tirupati
| Main Author: | 1B. Sasi Kumar, 1P.SudhaPriya, 1B. Manohar, 1M.N.Sekar, 1K.Siva Ramudu, 2Shankar Reddy Dudala and 1C.Naveen Kumar |
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| Format: | Article info Journal |
| Terbitan: |
IJHS Medical Association
, 2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
https://www.ijhsonline.com/index.php/IJHS/article/view/58 |
Daftar Isi:
- IntroductionThe level of child under-nutrition remains unacceptable throughout the world. Today more than 195 million children in developing countries are stunted. Suboptimal infant and young child feeding practices and micronutrient deficiencies are major contributors to under-nutrition, morbidity and mortality in children. Improving infant and young child feeding practices will help South Asian countries achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality.ObjectivesTo assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of complementary feeding and the source of information among mothers of children from 6 months to 24 months of age. To correlate the complementary feeding practices, with various factors affecting like education, occupation, parity of the mother, sex of the child, socioeconomic status, and the type of the family.MethodsIt is a cross-sectional study, including, 300 mothers with children aged 6 - 24 months, attending Pediatric Outpatient Department of Sri Venkateswara Ramnarayana Ruia government General Hospital Tirupati from February 2014 to January 2015. Data was collected using a self-administered, semi-structured questionnaire. Statistical AnalysisMean, Frequencies, Percentages, Chi-Square test and Pearson’s correlation test. ResultsMean age of knowledge of the mothers regarding complementary feeding was 4.25 months. About 40% of the mothers had knowledge that complementary feeding should be started at 6 months and 71 mothers (24%) had no knowledge. The reason quoted by most of the mothers for starting complementary feeding in this study was, not enough milk along with traditional beliefs and advices from the elderly females in the family (34%). In the present study majority of the mothers (76.3%) started complementary feeding with homemade foods.ConclusionOverall there is a predominant prevalence of early complementary feeding practices as evidenced by the results of the study.