Background: Information breast milk is the one and only natural, complete and complex nutrition for human infants. Also, exclusive breastfeeding is the best and cost effective intervention to prevent childhood morbidities and mortalities, exclusively breastfed children are at a much lower risk of infection from diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, pneumonia, meningitis, ear infections, lower rates of childhood cancers including leukemia and lymphoma than infants who receive other foods. However, over two-thirds deaths occurring worldwide during the first year of life children are often associated with inappropriate feeding practices, especially due to poor exclusive breastfeeding practices.
Objective: To assess exclusive breastfeeding practices and associated factors among mothers who have infants less than six months old at public health facility in Hargeisa, Somaliland. 2023
Methodology: The study was used institution based cross-sectional design and the sample size was 264. Structured questionnaire was also used. The data than was entered, coded and cleaned into Epi data version 3.1 and was exported to Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20 for further analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize the socio-demographic characteristics’ of the study participants and bivariate logistic regression was performed to each independent variable with the outcome variable and those variables with a p value < 0.05 was included in the final model (multivariate analysis). Strength of association was measured using odds ratio, and 95% confidence intervals. Statistical significance was declared at P value <0.05.
Results: The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding in the study area was 50.1%. Among different socio-demographic, health service, maternal, and infant related factors studied; Age of the child, maternal occupation, household income, breastfeeding counseling during ANC, husband support of breastfeeding, colostrum feeding and not feeding prelactal were the determinant factors for higher chance of EBF practice.
Recommendation: The government should work on promoting behavior change communication on exclusive breastfeeding practice and take appropriate actions to avoid other related traditional activities which discourage EBF
Published Date: 2024-01-31; Received Date: 2024-01-02
