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Volume 6, Issue 5, October Issue - 2018, Pages:871-878


Authors: Aliyu Hassan,Zakari UM,Aishetu Muhammad
Abstract: A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the caregiver’s nutrition knowledge, practices and nutritional status of children (0-59 months) in Kaduna metropolis. A semi-structured interview and questionnaire were used to generate the needed information from 416 respondents. The analysis was carried out using SPSS version 20.0 and p-value (p<0.05) was considered significant. Finding of present study revealed that 65.5% of caregivers were between 19 to 45 years, not educated beyond primary school (60.8%) and were mostly (71.8%) living below the poverty line. Knowledge of caregivers on breastfeeding, complementary feeding, and hygiene practices was high. However, indices on practices were generally poor. It showed 24.8% initiated breastfeeding within an hour of delivery, 87.7% introduced substances including food to the child before the age of six months. Only 21.4% met the minimum meal frequency, 13.5% diversification and 6.9% met the minimum acceptable diet. Barriers to effective practices include inadequate financial resources, lack of family support and perception that children of lesser age are too young to be fed from all the food groups. On nutritional status, 66.9% of the children had varying degrees of underweight, 30.2% wasting and 55.3% stunting. There was a negative relationship between child undernutrition and caregivers’ level of education, income status and minimum acceptable diet significantly at p<0.05.The pragmatic approach is needed to close the existing gap between caregivers’ knowledge and practices on breastfeeding and complementary feeding to reduce the high level of child malnutrition in the metropolis.
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