Nutrition Uptake among Pregnant Women: A Case of Solwezi District, North Western Province

Abstract

Background: Zambia has a population of 17.4 million people of which 48% are unable to meet their minimum calorie requirement and 35% of the children in Zambia are stunted (ZDHS, 2018). In the 2018 ZDHS report, 31% of women aged 15 -49 had anaemia. Most cases of anaemia in pregnancy are due to micronutrient deficiency and maternal malnutrition. The 2020 Zambia Global Nutrition Report shows an increase in the prevalence of anaemia among women of reproductive age (45%) and low birth weight infants (13.0%) which suggested a need to explore determinants of pregnant women's nutrition uptake in order to improve the nutritional status of pregnant women particularly those in Solwezi district of the north-western province of Zambia. Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted on antenatal mothers aged 15 -49 accessing routine antenatal care from four selected health facilities in Solwezi district from July 2021 to February 2021. Cluster sampling method was used to select the 4 health facilities and the 98 antenatal mothers were selected using systematic sampling method. Data was collected using a pretested researcher-assisted semi-structured questionnaire and analyzed using the SPSS version 26. Chi-square test was used to determine associations between the independent and independent variables. The level of significance was set at 0.05 and the confidence interval was set at 95%. Multiple logistic regression analysis was done to predict associations among variables. Results: The findings revealed that a large proportion of respondents (71.4 %) had high knowledge regarding nutrition during pregnancy compared to (19.4%) and (9.2%) who expressed medium and low knowledge levels respectively. Attitude towards nutrition in pregnancy was positive in the majority, 82 (83.7%) of the respondents, and over half, (55%) of the respondents reported good nutrition uptake during pregnancy. Conclusions: In