Infant feeding practices of mothers in an urban area in Nepal.
Article
in English
| IMSEAR
| ID: sea-46426
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Child health in developing countries including Nepal is a matter of serious concern as the prevalence of malnutrition among children continues to be high with 48.6% of children under five in Nepal being underweight. Since infant feeding practices adopted by mothers play a major role in influencing health of these children, there is a need to study the infant feeding practices prevalent in different areas in order to have pragmatic approaches to solve this problem. MATERIALS ANDMETHODS:
A cross sectional study was conducted among mothers who attended the immunization clinics of 18 wards of Pokhara municipality area. They were interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaire on various aspects of infant feeding.RESULT:
A total of 168 mothers were interviewed and prevalence of breastfeeding was 99.4% (167). Only 43.5% of the mothers initiated breastfeeding within one hour of birth and 60.5% were practicing exclusive breastfeeding at 5 months. Almost 40% of the mothers started complementary feeding before the recommended age of 6 months and 22.5 % delayed introduction of complementary feeding beyond the recommended age.CONCLUSION:
Breast feeding practices adopted by mothers of Pokhara urban area are still lacking in terms of late initiation of and early starting of complementary feeding. There is a need to educate the mothers regarding proper infant feeding practices.
Full text:
Available
Index:
IMSEAR (South-East Asia)
Main subject:
Urban Population
/
Weaning
/
Bottle Feeding
/
Breast Feeding
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Infant, Newborn
/
Cross-Sectional Studies
/
Surveys and Questionnaires
/
Adult
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prevalence study
/
Qualitative research
/
Risk factors
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Year:
2007
Type:
Article
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