Effect of enhanced nutrition services with community-based nutrition services on the diet quality of young children in Ethiopia.

Poor diet quality related to inadequate complementary feeding is a major public health problem in low and middle-income countries including Ethiopia. Low dietary diversity has been linked to negative health outcomes in children. To provide a package of interventions to close nutritional gaps through agriculture, the Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia (SURE) programme was set up as a multi-sectoral initiative and the results of combined effects of community-based and enhanced nutrition services, compared to community-based alone, on diet diversity and diet quality of complementary feeding of young children are presented. The study used pre- and post-intervention design. Baseline (n = 4980) data were collected from May to July 2016, and follow-up (n = 2419) data from December 2020 to January 2021. From 51 intervention districts having the SURE programme, 36 intervention districts were randomly selected for baseline and 31 for the follow-up survey. The primary outcome was diet quality: minimum dietary diversity (MDD), minimum meal frequency (MMF) and minimum acceptable diet (MAD). Comparing endline to baseline over the 4.5-year intervention, the use of standard community-based nutrition services of growth monitoring and promotion increased (16%-46%), as did enhanced nutrition services of infant and young child feeding counselling, and agricultural advising (62%-77%). Women involved in home gardening significantly increased (73%-93%); however, household production of food decreased yet consumption of most own-grown foods increased. Importantly, MAD and MDD increased four-fold. The SURE intervention programme was associated with improvements in complementary feeding and diet quality through enhanced nutrition services. This suggests programmes targeted at nutrition-sensitive practices can improve child feeding in young children.

Intention, magnitude and factors associated with bottle feeding among mothers of 0-23 months old children in Holeta town, Central Ethiopia: a cross sectional study.

BACKGROUND: World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that bottle feeding should be avoided for infant and young child feeding since it has an impact on optimal breastfeeding, appropriate complementary feeding and bottles with a nipple are prone to contamination. The objectives of this study were to determine intention, magnitude and factors associated with bottle feeding among mothers of 0-23 months infants and children. METHODS: Community based cross sectional study was conducted from February to May 2016. A total of 422 mothers who had children 0-23 months were included in the study. Systematic random sampling was used to select the study subjects. Data were collected using a pre-tested interviewer administered structured questionnaire. The data were cleaned, coded, entered in to EPI-INFO version 3.5.4, and transferred and analyzed using SPSS. Odds ratio was calculated with 95% CI to identify factors associated with bottle feeding practice. P-values less than 0.05 were considered as statistically significant. RESULTS: The prevalence of bottle-feeding in this study was 19.6% and another 27.6% mothers have intention of bottle feeding. Being infant age of 0-5 months [AOR = 0.27;95% CI:(0.12,0.62)] and being a housewife [AOR = 0.37;95% CI:(0.21,0.67)] were negatively associated while having three under five children [AOR = 2.77;95% CI:(1.07,7.14)], not attending PNC follow-up [AOR = 2.13;95% CI:(1.19,4.97)], lower age of mothers [AOR = 3.38;95% CI:(1.48,7.73)] and not counseled on bottle feeding [AOR = 2.18;95% CI:(1.24,3.83)] were positively associated with bottle feeding. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of bottle feeding in the study area was high compared to the national prevalence of bottle feeding. Working outside home, lower maternal age, older age of children, having more than one under five children in the household, not attending PNC follow-up and not counseled on bottle feeding were found to be risk factors associated with bottle feeding practice in the study area.