Abstract

Author:
Bivechana Chaulagain

Doi: 10.26480/jhcdc.02.2024.31.40

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Exclusive breastfeeding is defined as an infant’s consumption of human milk with no supplementation of any type (no water, no juice, no non-human milk and no foods) except for vitamins, minerals and medications. It is estimated that more than one out of every 10 infant-deaths (13%) could be saved by promoting exclusive breastfeeding. The objective of this study was to find out prevalence and factors associated with exclusive breastfeeding among mothers of infants in Lalbandi Municipality of Sarlahi district Nepal. Community based cross-sectional study was conducted among the mother of infants of Lalbandi municipality of Sarlahi district, Nepal from October 2020 to February 2021. Data collection was carried out by using pretested semi structured questionnaire. The sample size of the study was 246 including 5% non-response rate. Informed consent was taken from each research participants before data collection after explaining the purpose of the study. Descriptive statistics was calculated in terms of frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation (SD). The association between exclusive breastfeeding status and independent variables was considered significant when p value was < 0.05, which was calculated by bivariate analysis. Among the total 246 mothers of infant, the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding was slightly more than half in the study area. The mean age of the respondents was 25.67 years with ± 4.98 standard deviation. Factors such as family type, family size, mother’s occupation, father’s occupation, age of child, birth space, counselling on breast feeding, plan to feed child before delivery, awareness on time on initiation of breastfeeding, awareness regarding importance of exclusive breastfeeding to mothers, opinion on feeding expressed breastmilk as exclusive breastfeeding, opinion on exclusive breastfeeding as family planning, time duration of initiation of breast feeding, prelactal feeding and status of exclusive breastfeeding by their friends/relatives were found to be significantly associated with exclusive breastfeeding. The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding was lower in the study area than the national data. Exclusive breastfeeding for six months should be encouraged among women and education on exclusive breastfeeding should be offered to mothers during ANC visit. Similarly, local municipality should provide specific education on exclusive breastfeeding program to those community.