| dc.description.abstract | A cross-sectional analytical study was carried out at the Kahawa West Public Health Centre ,
Nairobi, Kenya, among randomly sampled 286 mothers and their children aged 6-23 months. Data was entered
and analyzed using (SPSS version 20). Anthropometric measurements were analyzed using ENA for SMART.
Chi-square test (p< 0.05) was used to show the relationships. The respondents were mostly young (mean age
26.1±4.7 years), married (88.1%), housewives (66.4%) with mainly primary school level of education (47.2%).
The main sources of income for most households were business (48.6%) and casual labour (31.8%). All (100%)
the children aged 6-8 had been introduced to solids, semi-solids and soft foods. Majority of the breast-fed
children received minimum meal frequency; 6-8 months old (95.9%) and 9-23 months old (96.4%) unlike the
non-breast fed children (55.0%). The percentage of children who consumed vitamin A rich foods was 60.8% and
iron-rich foods were 11.5%. Over three quarters (79.0%) of the children attained the minimum dietary diversity
whereas 75.9% attained the minimum acceptable diet. Overall, 13.3% of all the children were stunted, 11.9%
wasted and 16.8% underweight. Children who did not attain the minimum meal frequency were likely to be
wasted (chi-square test; 0.001) and underweight (chi-square test; 0.013).Nutrition messages on Infant and
Young Child Feeding Practices should emphasis dietary diversity and frequency of feeding especially for nonbreastfed children | en_US |
