Minimum Acceptable Diet and its Predictors among Children Aged 6-23 Months in Mareka District, Southern Ethiopia: Community Based Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Optimal infant and young child feeding practices are essential for normal growth, better health, and mental and physical development. Even though there are a lot of nutrition intervention programs in Ethiopia, still suboptimal feeding practices are prevalent. This study was devised to assess a level of minimum acceptable diet (MAD) and predictors among children aged 6-23 months in Mareka District, south Ethiopia. Method: A community-based cross-sectional study was employed on 662 study participants from August 15 to September 15/ 2015. They were selected by a multi-stage sampling technique. Data were collected by interviewer-administered semi-structured questionnaires. Statistical significance was declared at p-value <0.05 at multivariable logistic regression. Result: The study showed that 35.5 % of the children aged 6-23 months met the recommended MAD. Maternal primary and secondary education (AOR: 1.90; 95% CI: 1.15-3.16 and AOR: 2.06, 95% CI: 1.12-3.77), Media exposure (AOR: 2.16; 95% CI: 1.46-3.29), health facility delivery (AOR:2.52; 95% CI: 1.54-4.13), child age of 9-11 and 12-23 months (AOR:2.73; 95% CI: 1.41-5.49 and AOR:2.55; 95% CI: 1.39-4.69) and GMP service utilization (AOR: 4.09; 95% CI: 2.51-6.65) were associated with MAD of children. Conclusion: The level of MAD among children was low. Maternal educational status, media exposure, institutional delivery, child age, and GMP service utilization were associated with MAD. Increasing utilization of GMP service, health facility delivery, maternal education, and media promotion was recommended to increase the level of MAD.

Determinants of Inadequate Minimum Dietary Diversity Intake Among Children Aged 6–23 Months in Sub-Saharan Africa: Pooled Prevalence and Multilevel Analysis of Demographic and Health Survey in 33 Sub-Saharan African Countries

“…The current study found that as the age of children increases, the odds of having inadequate minimum DD decreases, which implies that the practice of adequate minimum DD significantly increases as the child's age increases. This is similar to studies conducted in Indonesia (9), Bangladesh (47), Malawi (16), and Ethiopia (14,28).…”

“…Children from lower-middle and higher middle-income level countries also have less chance to have inadequate MDD as compared to lower-income levels. This is in line with a study conducted in India (27,61,62), Bangladesh (47), South Asia (22), Tanzania (25), and Ethiopia (12,55,56), but other studies in Ethiopia showed that no association with it (10,14). This difference might be due to the small sample size and covers the small district of the latter two studies.…”

“…This study showed that, as the educational status of women improves, so do their chances of having children who did not access MDD. This is supported by a study conducted in Indonesia (9), Bangladesh (47), South Asia (22), India (27), Tanzania (25), Ghana (53), and Ethiopia (14,(54)(55)(56). Mothers' knowledge of child feeding was positively associated with MDD in childfeeding practice (10,12,54).…”

“…Undernutrition is linked to just under half of all the deaths of children aged under five each year (10,13). Nearly one-third of child deaths could be prevented by optimal complementary feeding practices (14). Research has shown that in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), children lost up to 2.5 years of schooling if there was a famine, while they were in utero and during their childhood (13).…”

Minimum acceptable diet and associated factors among children aged 6–23 months in Ethiopia: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…As a result, the source of heterogeneity was deference towards residence (Table 2). and child age [43][44][45], ANC [21,22], PNC [21,24,25,28,46], Household food insecurity [42][43][44], maternal education [25,42,47], wealth index [22,25,28,43,45,46], nutrition information [27,28,43], mothers' decision power [26,27], media exposure [23,25,27,45,48], maternal knowledge [26,49] and residence [17,28,50]) had data that could be used in the quantitative meta-analysis. Greater heterogeneity was observed among studies evaluating maternal decision-making, the age of the child, and being both middle and rich wealth groups (Table 3).…”