Vol. 7, Issue 6 (2019)
Breast feeding practices: Effect on infant morbidity
Author(s): Vinutha U Muktamath and Sunanda Itagi
Abstract: WHO recommends mothers worldwide to exclusively breastfeed infants for the child's first six months to achieve optimal growth, development and health. Breast milk comes equipped with antibodies that a woman generates and passes on to her infant. Babies have immature immune systems, less stomach acid to destroy foreign substances and unsanitary eating habits, so these antibodies improve their chances of survival. If every child was breastfed within an hour of birth, given only breast milk for their first six months of life, and continued breastfeeding up to the age of two years, about 800,000 child lives would be saved every year. In view of this, a differential design on “Breast Feeding Practices: Effect on Infant Morbidity†was conducted in the year 2015-16 with the objective to assess the effect of breast feeding practices on infant morbidity. The population of the study consisted of 900 mother –infant dyads, where the infants were in the age group of 3months to 24 months and their mothers from rural as well as urban area of northern Karnataka. The tools used for the study were Socio – economic status scale developed by Aggarwal et al. (2005) [1] and a self structured questionnaire to document the feeding practices, patterns, maternal and child health indicators, knowledge and attitude of mothers towards breast feeding. Most (51.78%) of the mothers reported that the children were suffering illness as against no illness (48.22%). Regarding the type of illness the type of illness recorded the most was cold and upper respiratory tract infections (40.44%), followed by diarrhoea (17.56%), colic pain (8.22%), sinus problems (5.56%), constipation (5.44%), ear infections (5.33%), Pneumonia and lung infections (4.11%), urinary tract infections (2.67%) and heart and Kidney problems (0.33%). It was observed that majority of the exclusively breast fed infants for first six months did not report any illness (75.26 vs 24.74%), followed by predominantly breast fed infants (38.34 Vs 61.76%), complementarily fed infants (15 vs 85%) and never breast fed infants (7.10 Vs 92.86%) indicating higher odd of illness in children who are breast fed for less than three months.
Pages: 1028-1033 | 273 Views 50 Downloads
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How to cite this article:
Vinutha U Muktamath, Sunanda Itagi. Breast feeding practices: Effect on infant morbidity. Int J Chem Stud 2019;7(6):1028-1033.
