Patterns of Infant Feeding Practices and Associated Factors in Mathare North Health Center, Nairobi County

Abstract

Background Good child feeding practice is a crucial determinant of infants optimal growth, development, and good health status. Appropriate nutrition within the first two years of a child's life decreases morbidity and mortality in infants and lowers the risk of chronic diseases. This encourages better child overall growth and development. Good breastfeeding practices combined with appropriate complementary feeding practices improve child development and thus reduce healthcare costs arising from frequent preventable childhood illness. Hence, there is a need to understand the patterns of infant feeding practices and associated factors that will help health practitioners prevent and address barriers to attaining exclusive breastfeeding mothers, including those living with HIV. Broad Objective To describe proportions of women who meet WHO recommendations for exclusive breastfeeding and minimum infant dietary diversity among women in the MTCV study in Mathare North Health Center Study design Secondary data analysis of a prospective longitudinal study-the mother to infant/Child virome transmission study (MTCV) Study setting The longitudinal study was conducted at Mathare North health center in Nairobi, Kenya Methodology This study was nested within the larger MTCV study. Data on maternal and child-related characteristics and infant feeding practices were abstracted from the master dataset of the more extensive MTCV study database and analyzed for this study. The abstracted data included;

breastfeeding initiation, duration of exclusive breastfeeding, and timing of introduction of complementary feeding. Other information collected during the clinic and home follow-up visits included illnesses episodes, hospitalizations, medications, infant nutrition, infant feeding practice and initiation of complementary feeding.......................................................................