Comparisons of complementary feeding indicators and associated factors in children aged 6–23 months across five South Asian countries

Abstract

Improving infant and young child feeding practices will help South Asian countries achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality. This paper aims to compare key indicators of complementary feeding and their determinants in children aged 6-23 months across five South Asian countries - Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The latest Demographic and Health Survey and National Family Health Survey India data were used. The analyses were confined to last-born children aged 6-23 months - 1728 in Bangladesh, 15,028 in India, 1428 in Nepal, 2106 in Sri Lanka and 443 infants aged 6-8 months in Pakistan. Introduction of solid, semi-solid or soft foods, minimum dietary diversity, minimum meal frequency and minimum acceptable diet, and their significant determinants were compared across the countries. Minimum dietary diversity among children aged 6-23 months ranged from 15% in India to 71% in Sri Lanka, with Nepal (34%) and Bangladesh (42%) in between. Minimum acceptable diet among breastfed children was 9% in India, 32% in Nepal, 40% in Bangladesh and 68% in Sri Lanka. The most consistent determinants of inappropriate complementary feeding practices across all countries were the lack of maternal education and lower household wealth. Limited exposure to media, inadequate antenatal care and lack of post-natal contacts by health workers were among predictors of inappropriate feeding. Overall, complementary feeding practices among children aged 6-23 months need improvement in all South Asian countries. More intensive interventions are necessary targeting the groups with sup-optimal practices, while programmes that cover entire populations are being continued.

Dietary Diversity Feeding Practice and Determinants among Children Aged 6-23 Months in Kemba Woreda, Southern Ethiopia Implication for Public Health Intervention

“…This community based cross-sectional study identified the prevalence of dietary diversity feeding practice was 131 (23.3%) fed their child four or more varieties of foods and the rest 431 (76.7%) feed ≤3 food items from the seven food groups in 24 hour preceding the survey based on the WHO recommendation and indicators [26,28], the finding is higher than national prevalence which is 10.8% and relatively higher from recent study conducted in North Ethiopia Mekelle city which is 17.8% [29],and relatively lower than from finding from Nepalese (30.4%) [30].…”

“…In general service utilization like growth monitoring, Post natal, Antenatal and institutional delivery enhance diversified feeding practice of mothers for their child because health professional give health education on importance of dietary diversity feeding practice during this service utilization [29,30,33].…”

Women’s autonomy and social support and their associations with infant and young child feeding and nutritional status: community-based survey in rural Nicaragua

“…Finally, we used the general linear model for continuous outcomes and logistic regression for binary outcomes to estimate associations with the main explanatory variables. To facilitate comparisons of our results with results from a series of papers on a similar topic (33) , we defined main outcome as negative ('not meeting recommended feeding behaviour') and coded the statistical analyses according to the convention that an odds below 1 is a favourable and an odds above 1 is an unfavourable outcome.…”

“…Covariates Based on previous research on factors associated with infant and young child feeding practices (33) as well as determinants of child nutritional status in the context of Nicaragua (34) , the following indicators were selected as potential confounders: municipality, housing quality, food insecurity, women's education, women's age (years), child age (months), child sex and number of children under 5 years of age in the household. Housing quality was calculated using information on the quality of household construction, toilet facilities and sources of water and electricity.…”

Comparison of Clinical and Laboratory Characteristics of Intestinal Amebiasis with Shigellosis among Patients Visiting a Large Urban Diarrheal Disease Hospital in Bangladesh

“…Lack of maternal knowledge and practices related to the importance of breast feeding and appropriate weaning practices and optimal hygienic behaviors often interfere with the proper care of children. [13][14][15] On the other hand, fathers as the household heads are the primary decision makers for the family, particularly in health care-seeking behaviors and use of health care facilities. In univariate analysis, we noted the associations between lack of formal schooling of both parents with intestinal amebiasis.…”