Descriptive study evaluating the use of the Road to Health card by doctors in a tertiary Paediatric hospital setting

Objective: To (i) describe the infant feeding practices of South African women living in Soweto and (ii) understand from the mothers’ perspective what influences feeding practices. Design: Semi-structured focus group discussions (FGD) and in-depth interviews (IDI) were conducted, and data were analysed using thematic analysis. Setting: Soweto, South Africa. Participants: Nineteen mothers were stratified into three FGD according to their baby’s age as follows: 0–6-month-olds, 7–14-month-olds and 15–24-month-olds. Four mothers from each FGD then attended an IDI. Results: Although mothers understood that breast-feeding was beneficial, they reported short durations of exclusive breast-feeding. The diversity and quality of weaning foods were low, and ‘junk’ food items were commonly given. Infants were fed using bottles or spoons and feeding commonly occurred separately to family meal times. Feeding practices were influenced by mothers’ beliefs that what babies eat is important for their health and that an unwillingness to eat is a sign of ill health. As such, mothers often force-fed their babies. In addition, mothers believed that feeding solid food to babies before 6 months of age was necessary. Family matriarchs were highly influential to mothers’ feeding practices; however, their advice often contradicted that of health professionals. Conclusions: In South Africa, interventions aimed at establishing healthier appetites and eating behaviours in early life should focus on: (i) fostering maternal self-efficacy around exclusive breast-feeding; (ii) challenging mixed feeding practices and encouraging more responsive feeding approaches and (iii) engaging family members to promote supportive household and community structures around infant feeding.

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Maternal perspectives on infant feeding practices in Soweto, South Africa

Wrottesley

Prioreschi

Slemming

et al. 2020

Public Health Nutr.

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Publics, technologies and interventions in reproduction and early life in South Africa

Manderson

Ross

2020

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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Despite successful clinical interventions and maternal and child health monitoring for over a century, low and middle-income countries, including South Africa, continue to experience the quadruple burden of disease of high maternal mortality rates and poor infant and child health, non-communicable diseases, infectious diseases, and violence and injury. In this article, we focus on how different kinds of technologies in South Africa are implemented in the 'first 1000 days' from conception to early childhood. Some of these interventions, as we discuss, are lifesaving; others are conceptualised as preventing early and longer-term health problems, including cardiometabolic conditions into adulthood and in future generations. Here, we consider the use of routine and specialist technologies in reproduction and early life: scanning and monitoring in pregnancy, caesarean section, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for very low birth weight infants, and the Road to Health Booklet. Through this focus, we illustrate how 'publics' are constituted such that foetal and infant health outcomes are privileged over women's health, reproductive rights, and public health safety.

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Descriptive study evaluating the use of the Road to Health card by doctors in a tertiary Paediatric hospital setting

Abstract: This open-access article is distributed under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0.

Cited by 2 publications

References 8 publications

Maternal perspectives on infant feeding practices in Soweto, South Africa

Maternal perspectives on infant feeding practices in Soweto, South Africa

Publics, technologies and interventions in reproduction and early life in South Africa

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