Infant and child feeding practices among farming communities in Southern Ethiopia

ObjectivesThe main objective of this study is to examine the breast feeding and complementary feeding practices among farming communities of Southern Ethiopia.MethodsThe study used primary data collected from 1094 households located in ten kebeles (the smallest administrative segment) through the multi stage probability sampling technique. Information on demography of breast feeding was measured by universally accepted computational tools given by WHO. Data were analyzed using univariate, bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques.ResultThe result demonstrated that a large proportion of respondents were breast feeding their last child (age <2) during the survey. Majority of women initiated breast feeding early (just at birth); 56% of the women practiced exclusive breast feeding and more than 86% reported consistently continuing breast feeding until age 2. The complementary feeding starts late for significant proportion of children at age 6–8 months and a larger proportion of children in the age groups 6–8 and 9–11 months did not get the core food groups such as cereal, egg, and meat. The results of the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression revealed that four variables predicted the level of dietary food consumption, namely; experiencing child death during the last five years preceding the survey, institutional delivery of the last child, literacy status and household hunger. Also, three predictors appeared to have significant association with the likelihood of continuation of breast feeding at age 2; namely, age of women, household hunger and working outside home.ConclusionThe study concluded that there are positive signs on infant and child feeding practices which should be promoted such as the relatively higher rate of exclusive breastfeeding during the first half of infancy and continued breastfeeding through the second year of life and beyond. There are also certain practices that require attention which include the widespread use of bottles, delayed introduction of complementary foods, and low dietary diversity throughout the first two years of life.