Child Welfare Clinical Attendance And Child Feeding Practices In Awutu Senya East Municipality

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Adequate infant feeding enhances growth, overall health and survival of infants in the early years of life and throughout the life cycle. Maternal health care services offer mothers education on infant feeding and care. Effective counselling, knowledge and attendance of caregivers to child welfare clinics is a major route towards optimal infant feeding. As Ghana seeks to achieve optimal universal health for all mothers and children through targeted policy making, this study makes significant contributions to the current literature on Child welfare clinic utilization and infant feeding that can help to identify child feeding gaps that require immediate attention. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between CWC attendance and caregivers‘ child feeding practices in the Awutu Senya East Municipality.

METHODOLOGY:

A cross sectional study design was used. The study units consisted of a mother with an infant between the ages of 6 to 24 months attending a child welfare clinic (CWC).The sample size was estimated based on the exclusive breast feeding rate of 52% for Ghana. Cochran formulae was used to calculate a sample size of 384 mothers with infants. A systematic sampling technique was used to select 342 participants of this study. This study was conducted at the Kasoa poly clinic. A structured and pretested questionnaire was used to interview respondents. STATA software version 15.1 was used for the data analyses. Basic descriptive statistics was run and the results were presented using tables depicting frequencies, percentage and proportions. The relationship between variables were further analyzed using simple and multiple logistic regression.

Results:

In total 73.5% women initiated breastfeeding within the first hour of delivery whiles. Almost all the mothers (99.8%) gave the first yellowish breast milk (colostrum) to their babies. v Less than half of the mothers (35.4%) gave their infants four (4) out of the seven (7) food groups within 24 hours of the study. Thus, almost two-thirds (65.0%) had sub-optimal complementary feeding practices as compared to the few (38.6%) who had not practiced exclusive breastfeeding practices. Only 62.5% of mothers made regular visits to the child welfare clinic. Logistic regression of CWC attendance and child feeding practices were examined after bivariate analysis. It was revealed that regular child welfare clinic attendance had significant association on both exclusive breastfeeding (OR=1.71, 95% C.I=1.11-2.63) and complementary feeding (OR=0.58, 95% C.I=0.34-0.82). The logistic regression revealed that households with average (OR=3.25, 95% C.I=1.07-9.89) and rich financial status (OR=6.40, 95% C.I=1.18-7.61), mother aged 26-35 years (OR=2.09, 95% C.I=1.26-3.46) and single mothers (OR=0.26, 95% C.I=0.12- 0.54) were the most significant determinants of exclusive breast feeding practices. However, it was brought to light that mothers who delivered in CHPS compounds (OR=3.20, 95% C.I=1.52- 6.73), unemployed (OR=3.18, 95% C.I=1.76-5.75), single (OR=2.26, 95% C.I=1.17-4.38) and children aged 7-9 months (OR=0.35, 95% C.I=0.15-0.80) were the most significant determinants of optimal complementary feeding practices.

Conclusion:

This study showed that optimal infant feeding practices were determined by frequent attendance of mothers to child welfare clinic. Therefore, components of child welfare clinic utilization should be addressed when scaling-up infant feeding in Ghana.