| dc.description.abstract | Background: Exclusive breast feeding (EBF) in the first six months reduces infant mortality and morbidity because of the nutrients it provides that is sufficient for a child’s health growth and development. Globally, adolescents constitute 18% of the world population and 26% of them are already mothers by the age of 15-19.Interventions have been designed to promote EBF practices but still the prevalence has remained low. Currently there is limited data on EBF among adolescent mothers in Uganda. Therefore, this study was to determine the prevalence of exclusive breast feeding and associated factors among adolescent mothers in Sironko district.
Methods: This community based cross sectional study with mixed methods recruited 361 adolescent mothers aged 10-19 years who had given birth in the past 24months. Two stage sampling technique was used to select sub counties and villages from which these adolescents were obtained. The households were purposively selected. Dependent variable was exclusive breast feeding for six months. The independent variables were: Maternal: age, marital status, occupation, religion, income, education, Knowledge on EBF, Mode of delivery, Place of delivery, initiation of breast feeding, attendance of Ante natal care (ANC), attendance of post natal care (PNC), source of information about EBF, Counseled on EBF, number ANC visits, type of counseling about EBF, type of health Centre. Infant: age, sex, birth order, birth defect, status of the pregnancy during delivery. Logistic regression was used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (AOR) and the 95% confidence intervals (CI) of EBF among adolescent mothers.
Results: The prevalence of EBF for six months was 26.3%. Exclusive breast feeding was more likely if: adolescent mothers had female babies (AOR: 1.90, 95%CI: 1.11-3.22), attended four ANC visits (AOR: 2.991, 95% CI: 1.75-5.10) and attended ANC from health centers II/III (AOR: 2.705, 95% CI: 1.51-4.82). However, EFB was less likely if mothers received group information about EBF during ANC (AOR: 0.487, 95% CI: 0.27-0.88).
Conclusions: The prevalence of EBF among adolescent mothers was much lower than the national prevalence of 69%. This reflects need for strategies to improve EBF among adolescent mothers such as: sensitizing them about the importance of EBF regardless of the sex of the baby, importance of attending 4 or more ANC visits especially at HC II/III as well as giving information about EBF individually during ANC visits. | en_US |
