Effect of Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices on the Nutritional Status of Children 0-24 Months of Age in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Abstract

Background:Childhood under-nutrition is prevalent in many developing countries including Nigeria, and is an underlying cause for more than half of all childhood deaths. Based on the recent Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), the prevalence of under-nutrition between 2008 and 2013 has risen, despite an increase in exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) rate over the same period. This study was carried out to assess the effect of infant and young child feeding practices on , nutritional status of children 0 -24 months in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Subjects and Methods: Data were collected between November and December 2016 from 307 mother-child (aged 0 -24 months) pairs attending six health centres in Port Harcourt using a pretested self-administered questionnaire. Data collected included maternal and child sociodemographics, mother's infant feeding practices, 24-hour dietary recall and anthropometric measurements. Data were analysed using SPSS version 20.0. Tobi et al.; AJMAH, 17(4): 1-21, 2019; Article no.AJMAH.53821 2 Results: The mean age of the children was 5.6±6.1 months, 207 (67.4%) were under 6 months of age and 100 (32.6%) between the ages of 6 to 24 months. Three hundred and three (98.7%) children were breastfed. The rate of exclusive breastfeeding was 51.7% among the children aged 0 -5.9 months. The mean age at which breastfeeding was stopped was 9.3±5.5 months. The average age at which complementary foods were started was 4.4±1.8 months. All the children on complementary feeding met the minimum feeding frequency, but only 43 (33.6%) met the minimum dietary diversity of 4 or more food groups. Overall, 111 (36.2%) children were fed according to WHO recommendation. 10.1% of the children were overweight/obese, 5.5% were wasted, 6.2% were underweight and 8.8% were stunted. Lack of EBF was positively associated with stunting (p = 0.024). Conclusion: Infant and Young Child Feeding practices among mothers in Port Harcourt fall short of the WHO recommendations, resulting in various types of malnutrition among the children. Therefore, more emphasis should be laid on growth monitoring and promotion services and agespecific nutritional counseling to parents and care-givers. Original Research Article

The First 6th-Month Nutritional Status of a Full-Term Child in Exclusive Breastfeeding: A Literature Review

“…Adiponectin levels depend on maternal BMI (Subarjati & Nuryanto, 2015). Wells et al (2012) studies show the same result as Tobi & George (2019). This study predominantly multiparous mother.…”

“…This indicator was discussed in four of the literature. The result of Tobi & George (2019) and Wells et al (2012) study show that there are significant results, while the study by Bechiri et al (2020) and Ma et al (2014) shows insignificance.…”

“…The second possibility, EBF termination at 0-3 months (Nigatu et al, 2019). Supported by Tobi & George (2019), there is a decreasing number of children who are given EBF up to the age of 5 months.…”

“…In Tobi & George (2019) studies, there are 10 samples of the overweight category and 3 samples of the obese category. Tobi & George (2019) did not include the nutritional status with BMI maternal indicator. BMI maternal > 30 (overweight) could be related to the levels of components of breast milk.…”

Maternal complementary feeding practices and anthropometric status of children (6-23 months) in Abakaliki Nigeria, a facility based study

“…Complementary feeding practices and nutritional status in Nigeria are well documented (Omotoye and Adesanmi, 2019;Sosanya et al, 2019;Ibrahim et al, 2019;Tobi et al, 2019;Oluwaseyi et al, 2019;Yusuf and Jibrin, 2020), however there is a dearth of recent evidence in Southeast Nigeria (Ayogu et al, 2015;Okereke et al, 2015;Ndiokwelu et al, 2014). Also, a good number of these local studies failed to apply either the revised WHO infant and young child feeding recommendations or the WHO 2006 growth reference in their data generation (Iheme et al, 2021).…”