Association between Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) Indicators and the Nutritional Status of Children (6–23 Months) in Northern Ghana

Abstract

Although recommended infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices have been found to be protective against undernutrition in some settings, there is no finality yet due to inconsistencies in the literature. A cross-sectional survey of 581 mother-child pairs was conducted in northern Ghana in June 2018. The association between IYCF indicators and child undernutrition (stunting and wasting) were assessed. The descriptive analysis showed that 66.4% of the children (6–23 months) were introduced to complementary feeding in a timely manner, 69.4% met the minimum meal frequency, and 38.9% met the minimum acceptable diet daily. The prevalence of stunting, wasting, underweight and overweight was 33.2%, 14.1%, 27% and 2.6%, respectively. From the multivariable binary logistic regression, child gender, child age group and source of power for lighting the household were significantly associated with wasting. Intake of iron-rich foods, child age group, and maternal height were significantly associated with stunting after adjusting for confounders. The prevalence of the compliance with IYCF indicators was relatively high. None of the individual IYCF indicators showed significant association with undernutrition, except intake of iron-rich foods for stunting. Nutrition-specific interventions targeted at improving IYCF practices, dietary diversification and intake of nutrient-rich meals, should be adopted and scaled up to address undernutrition in northern Ghana.

Risk factors associated with the coexistence of stunting, underweight, and wasting in children under 5 from 31 sub-Saharan African countries

“…This finding implies that countries that have high prevalence should take critical lessons from the countries that are doing well regarding the implementation of nutritional policies and interventions (eg, increasing dietary supplementation, increasing dietary diversity) that target the reduction of the coexistence of stunting, underweight and wasting among children under age 5 in SSA. 2 Similar to previous studies, 1 3 we found that children aged 1 year, 2 years and 3 years were at greater risk of Open access Open access having coexistence of all the three forms of undernutrition compared with those aged 0. This could be as a result of the fact that as children grow their energy needs also increase 1 thereby increasing their risk of having all three nutritional conditions.…”

“…Undernutrition among children under 5 years remains a major public health problem across many low-income and middle-income countries. [1][2][3] Factors such as insufficient food intake, diarrhoea, recurring infections, poor sanitation practices, and low parental education have been identified as significant contributors to the high prevalence of undernutrition during childhood. 1 4 5 Despite the numerous interventions rolled out to address childhood undernutrition especially in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where the phenomenon is quite pervasive, the progress seems to be insignificant.…”

Dietary Diversity and Undernutrition in Children Aged 6–23 Months in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Dietary diversity is considered to be an outcome of the nutritional status of children [3,4] and a key component of high-quality diets [5][6][7]. Dietary diversity is used as a tool to measure dietary quality, micronutrient adequacy, and food access [8][9][10][11] and it influences the health outcomes of children under five [3,12]. Studies show that inadequate dietary quality and diversity lead to undernutrition including stunting, underweight, and wasting [4,13].…”

“…The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that young children, especially infants should receive a minimum of four out of the seven groups of foods-namely: grains, roots, and tubers; legumes and nuts; dairy products; flesh foods (meat, fish, poultry, and organ meats); eggs; vitamin-A-rich fruits and vegetables; and other fruits and vegetables [5,14,15]-to maintain proper growth and development [15]. Yet, many children in low-and middle-income countries do not have adequate dietary diversity [8][9][10][11]. Less than one-fourth of children aged 6-23 months met the minimum acceptable diet dietary diversity and meal frequency standards in low and middle-income countries [16].…”

“…In terms of regional analysis, 57.5 million, 11.8 million, 3.0 million children under five years respectively were stunted, wasted, and severely wasted in 2019 [18]. Achieving the minimum dietary diversity (MDD) for children under five in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is a big challenge due to poverty which is related to the low-income status of many parents as they struggle to provide better complementary feeding practices for babies or meet the minimum standards of dietary diversity for infants and young children [8,9]. Household food insecurity has been identified as a factor for inadequate dietary diversity for infants in most sub-Saharan African countries [19][20][21][22].…”