Self-care practice and associated factors among hypertensive follow-up patients at East Gojam zone public hospitals, North West Ethiopia, 2021.

Uncontrolled hypertension leads to cardiovascular complications and organ damage. Self-care practice is crucial for the prevention and management of hypertension by improving quality of life, preventing complications and decreasing health care expenditure. The study aimed to assess self-care practice and its associated factors among hypertensive follow up patients at East Gojjam Zone public hospitals; in Northwest Ethiopia. Quantitative cross-sectional study design and qualitative phenomenological approach were applied. The quantitative result was supported by in-depth interview. Out of 480 patients included in the study, 49% have good self-care practices. Out of the total participants 44.6% have poor in antihypertensive medication adherence, 92.5% have low in diet management, 82.8% were poorly practiced physical activity and 62.5% poor practice to weight management. Participants who cannot read and write (AOR = 3.1, 95% CI: 1.6-5.9), and have no comorbidity (AOR = 0.4, 95% CI: 0.2-0.6), uncontrolled blood pressure status (AOR = 2.1, 95% CI: 1.2-3.6), poor social support status (AOR = 2.5, 95% CI: 1.5-4.3) and unfavorable attitude (AOR = 3.1, 95% CI: 1.9-5.2) are the factors for poor self-care practice. During interview; family meal preparation habits, inadequate information about self-care practice during follow-up time, inconvenient working environment, pressure during social events to share food, negligence, and poor self-efficacy were highly described as challenges for practicing and sustaining self- care. The level of hypertension self-care practices was found to be low. Therefore, hypertension self-care practices should be strengthened throughout their follow-up time, and creating awareness in the community is highly encouraged.

Cigarette smoking prevalence and associated factors among college students, Amhara, Ethiopia.

INTRODUCTION: tobacco is the only legal drug that kills many of its users when used exactly as intended by the manufacturers. It is estimated that of the 1.1 billion smokers worldwide, nearly 80% of them live in low and middle-income countries. This trend increases in college and university students with most smokers starting to smoke during adolescent. The aim of this study is to assess cigarette smoking prevalence and associated factors among a select group of college of teachers´ education students. METHODS: a cross-sectional study was conducted. Multistage sampling was used to select 605 study participants from across the eight departments of the Injibara College of Teachers´ Education. Each subject was selected by simple random sampling technique after proportional allocation to each class. EpiData version 4.2 was used for data entry and Stata version 14 was used for data cleaning and analysis. Variables with p-value < 0.2 in bi-variable analysis were selected for multi-variable analysis. Adjusted odds ratio (AOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was reported to show the strength of association. RESULTS: the current prevalence of cigarette smoking is 6.8% amongst the Injibara College of Teachers´ Education students. Males [AOR: 2.84 (95% CI: 1.13, 7.14)], divorced marital status [AOR: 7.27 (95% CI: 1.23, 42.85)], food source in hostel [AOR: 11.62 (95% CI 3.23, 41.71)] and exposure to family/other smokers [AOR: 6.17 (95% CI: 2.17, 16.06)] were statistically significant factors for cigarette smoking. CONCLUSION: the prevalence of cigarette smoking was relatively low. Male, marital status, source of food, and exposure to family/other smokers were identified associated factors. Policy makers and health regulatory body are strongly encouraged to consider this evidence and the associated factors for smoking in their efforts to develop and implement tobacco control laws.

Dietary diversity feeding practice and its associated factors among children age 6-23 months in Ethiopia from 2011 up to 2018: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Globally Less than one fourth of children aged 6-23 months get the recommended minimum dietary diversity feeding practice. Despite this issue is common in Ethiopia, fragmented and inconsistent findings were found. Therefore the main objective of this meta-analysis was to estimate the pooled prevalence of dietary diversity feeding practice and to identify its associated factors among children aged 6-23 months in Ethiopia. METHODS: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guideline was followed. Articles were systematically searched through PubMed, Google scholar, Google, Hinari and Cochrane library. Newcastle-Ottawa Scale adapted for cross-sectional studies quality assessment tool was used to assess the quality of each study. A total of 14 studies were extracted and analyzed using STATA 14. Random effect model was used to estimate the pooled prevalence; whereas subgroup analysis and meta-regression was performed to identify the probable source of heterogeneity. Both egger's and begg's test were used to check publication bias. Furthermore, the effect between associated factor variables, and dietary diversity feeding practices were examined. RESULTS: A total of 154 studies were retrieved and 14 studies were included in meta-analysis. The Meta analysis result showed that the pooled prevalence of dietary feeding practice among children age 6-23 months in Ethiopia was 23.25% with considerable heterogeneity (I2 = 98.8, p = 0.00). In the subgroup analysis, the lowest prevalence was observed in Amhara region (12.58%). Home delivery OR: 0.63, antenatal care follow up OR: 1.80, postnatal care visit OR: 2.61, mothers decision making status OR: 1.65, mothers media exposure status OR: 2.79 and being urban residence OR: 2.18 (1.26, 3.77) were significant factors for minimum dietary diversity feeding practice in Ethiopia. CONCLUSIONS: The pooled prevalence of dietary diversity feeding practice among children aged 6-23 months in Ethiopia was low. Place of delivery, post natal care, antenatal care service, mothers decision making status, mothers media exposure status and being urban residence were found to be the significant factors.

Barriers and facilitators of child-feeding practice in a small sample of individuals from Gozamin District, Northwest of Ethiopia: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: The first 1000 days is "window of opportunity" for nutrition and vital for physical growth, brain development and the immune system. None of previous studies explored qualitatively child-feeding practices in the developing countries like Ethiopia. The aim of the study was to explore barriers and facilitators of child-feeding practices in Gozamin District, Northwest Ethiopia. METHODS: A qualitative study was conducted by using 12 in-depth interviews and 4 Focus Group Discussions (n = 32) from Feb. 15/2016 - March 10/ 2016 in eight Kebeles. Purposive sampling technique was used to recruit the participants. The quality of the research findings was checked by using credibility, dependability, transferability and conformability. Data were analyzed using qualitative data analysis software package Atlas ti-7. RESULTS: Early initiation of breast-feeding and complementary feeding, exclusive breast-feeding, minimum meal frequency and minimum dietary diversity were the emerged theme in the study. Breastfeeding up to 2 years and above and timely initiation of a complementary feeding were commonly good practice in the area. Dietary diversity, discarding colostrums, pre-lacteal feeding like butter and bottle-feeding were the commonly harmful practices in the area. The most frequently mentioned barriers of child feeding were socio-cultural influences, traditional community practices, workload and poverty. CONCLUSIONS: Most of the children were suffered from harmful child feeding practices such as pre-lacteal feeding, discarding colostrums and bottle-feeding. Child dietary diversity and complementary food preparation were the major problem in the study area. Therefore, supports on complementary food preparation and diversity food should be given more attention to enhance child-feeding practice in rural Ethiopia.