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.......................................................................
Publisher
UON
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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