Complementary Feeding Knowledge, Practice, Dietary Diversity and Associated Factors among Mothers of Children 6-23 Months in Guto Gida District, Oromia, Ethiopia.

ABSTRACT The period for complementary feeding is crucial for growth, development and overall health of infants and young children. Lack of awareness in knowledge and practices towards complementary feeding among mothers will lead to improper practice of complementary feeding which may causes of children malnutrition, slower in recovery after illness and death. Hence, this study was aimed to assess complementary feeding knowledge, practice, dietary diversity and associated factors among mothers of children 6-23 months of age in Guto Gida District, Oromia, Ethiopia. Community based cross sectional study design was conducted among 410 mothers who had children aged 6-23 months in the study area. Cluster and simple random sampling techniques were used to select the required sample. A face to face interview was conducted to collect data using semi-structured and structured questionnaire. In addition, focus group discussion was also included in this study. The collected data was coded, organized and entered in to SPPSS windows version 22.0 and analyzed by using frequency, percentage and multi-logistic regression model. The result of this study revealed that about two-third (66.3%) of the respondents had good knowledge whereas nearly half (52.2%) of the mothers had good practices toward complementary feeding. The minimum dietary diversity identified from this study was 27.3%. Education levels of mothers had significant effect on mothers’ knowledge on complementary foods. In addition, age of mothers, mother occupation and wealthy index of the family had a significant effect on mothers’ complementary feeding practices. Furthermore, age of children, birth orders of children, wealthy index and educational level of mothers had a significant effect on dietary diversity of children. The overall findings were indicative of the problems of mothers’ knowledge and feeding practice toward complementary foods, and dietary diversity of 6-23 months of age children. Therefore, all possible interventions should be applied by all the concerned bodies to improve mothers’ knowledge and practice towards complementary foods, dietary diversity of children and thus to improve child survival. Keywords: Associated factors; Complementary Foods; Dietary Diversity; Infants and Young children; Knowledge; Practice