Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) Practices among Mothers Residing in Urban Slums of Agartala: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Inappropriate child feeding practices is a major contributor of undernutrition and childhood mortalityin India. The optimal infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices rank among the most effective intervention to improve child health and nutritional status. Objective: 1. To study the IYCF practices among mothers residing in urban slums of Agartala. 2. To study the factors associated with exclusive breast feeding and Minimum acceptable dietary intake. Method: This was a community based Cross-sectional study conducted among 180 mothers of children <24 months, residing in Urban slums of Agartala. Multistage simple random sampling procedure was adopted, and ‘WHO standard questionnaire for IYCF practices’ was used to assess the IYCF practices.Results: The study showed that the prevalence of exclusive breast feeding under 6 months was 67.39% and 91.70% mothers were continuing breast feeding at 2 years of age. Regarding complementary feeding practices, 67.20%, 73.90% and 58.95% children were having food with minimum dietary diversity, minimum meal frequency andminimum acceptable dietary (MAD) intake respectively. Early initiation of breast feeding was significantly associated with breast feeding practices (p value-0.00). Whereas, increasing age (p value-0.00),higher birth order (p value-0.03) and type of family (p value-0.01) had significant association with MAD intake. Conclusion: Study reveals suboptimal IYCF practices in the slums. There is urgent need to strengthen the on-going programs on IYCF practices targeting children with younger age and higher birth order.

Keywords

• complementary feeding
• colostrum
• exclusive breast feeding
• feeding patterns
• feeding related behavior