Nutritional Trends and Practices Among 6-23 Months Old Children: A Hospital-Based Cross-Sectional Study From Bhaktapur, Nepal

Abstract

Background: Child undernutrition has been a prevailing issue in country like Nepal. Though there has been progress over the decades, the burden of child undernutrition still remains unacceptably high. It is important to look at how infants and young children’s feeding practices and nutritional status are affected by nutrition transitioning in rapidly urbanizing Nepal Methods: This is a cross-sectional research design Children aged 6-23 months and their mothers visiting the hospital for regular immunization services constituted the study population. Data was collected from 305 children over four months from September 2019 to January 2020. Anthropometric measurements (weight and length) were collected of all children and their mothers/caretakers were interviewed on the IYCF practices via a semi-structured questionnaire Data was analyzed using WHO Anthro Survey Analyzer, Microsoft Excel and STATA 15.Results: Early initiation of breastfeeding was 47.9% and use of bottle was 48.5%. Minimum dietary diversity, minimum meal frequency and minimum acceptable diet were 66.2%, 79.1% and 54.4% respectively. Consumption of nutrient-poor packaged foods was 63.0% with biscuits being the most common type (52.1%) and 32.8% of the children were found to be drinking tea. Overall, 13.8% of the children were stunted, 3.9% were underweight and 1.7% were wasted while 2.3% were overweight.Conclusion: The practices related to breastfeeding and diets of young children in urban areas of Nepal are not optimal with only around half meeting the minimum standards recommended by the WHO. Therefore, there is a pressing need to wake up to the rapidly changing dietary patterns among young children through necessary urban nutrition policies and programmatic interventions, the rising adverse nutrition issues can be nipped in the bud before they get too pervasive.