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Assessment of Knowledge and Practices on Complementary Food Preparation and Child Feeding at Shebedino, Sidama Zone, Southern Ethiopia

2015; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2166-5168

Beruk Berhanu, Kebede Abegaz, Esayas Kinfe,

Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations

Under-nutrition is the common child malnutrition problem in Ethiopia. In this study the knowledge and practices of mothers on complementary food (CF) preparation, blending, traditional processing techniques and child feeding at Shebedino, Sidama, Ethiopia were assessed. Fifty six (56) mothers who had 6-24 month old children and living at Remeda and Teremesa kebeles (smallest administrative unit) were purposively selected for this study using semi-structured questionnaire. Agricultural production and/or availability of cereals, root crops, legumes, fruits and vegetables were assessed. Two focus group discussions were also conducted with mothers and experts group. The result revealed that all the mothers use maize and 75% use both maize and enset for preparation of complementary food. Only 8.9% use legumes for CF preparation. All the mothers prepare CF in the form of porridge and 75% prepare bread in addition to the porridge. Around 80.4% prepare the CF as normal family food. Soaking and germination of raw materials were not common. Boiling, roasting and fermentation were applied by all mothers for CF preparation. About 91.1% of the mothers started complementary feeding for their children at the age of six months and their major reason was the presence of health education (82.1%) at both kebeles. The first rank (76.8 %) of criteria for adoption and preparation of nutritionally improved CF was the cost. Around 98.2% of the mothers don't use commercial infant formula. About 57.1% have income of Birr 200 to 500. In conclusion, knowledge and practice gap on CF preparation, blending and traditional processing techniques was observed despite production and availability of crops, fruits and vegetables. This gap was related with economic problem.