The state of child nutrition in Ethiopia: an umbrella review of systematic review and meta-analysis reports

Abstract

Background Various systematic review and meta-analysis (SRM) studies were done on nutritional statuses of children in Ethiopia, but no summary of the findings was done on the topic. Thus, this umbrella review was done to summarize the evidence from SRM studies on the magnitude and determinants of malnutrition and poor feeding practices among under-5 children in Ethiopia.Methods PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Sciences, and Google Scholar were searched for SRM studies on the magnitude and risk factors of malnutrition and child feeding practice indicators in Ethiopia. The methodological quality of the included studies was assessed using the Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) tool. The estimates of the included SRM studies on the prevalence and determinants of stunting, wasting, underweight, and poor child feeding practices were pooled and summarized with random-effects meta-analysis models.Result We included nine SRM studies, containing a total of 214,458 under-5 children from 255 observation studies. The summary estimates of prevalence of stunting, underweight, and wasting were 42% (95%CI=37-46%), 33% (95%CI=27-39%), and 15% (95%CI=12-19%). The proportion of children who met the recommendations for timely initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding during the first 6 months, and timely initiation of complementary feeding were 65%, 60%, and 62%, respectively. The proportion of children who met the recommendations for dietary diversity and meal frequency were 20%, and 56.0%, respectively. Only 10% of children fulfilled the minimum criteria of acceptable diet. There was a strong relationship between poor feeding practices and the state of malnutrition, and both conditions were related to various health, socio-economic, and environmental factors.Conclusion Child malnutrition and poor feeding practices are highly prevalent and of significant public health concern in Ethiopia. Only few children are getting proper complementary feeding. Multisectoral efforts are needed to improve children's feeding practices and reduce the high burden of malnutrition in the country.

Soluble transferrin receptor level, inflammation markers, malaria, alpha‐thalassemia and selenium status are the major predictors of hemoglobin in children 6–23 months in Malawi

“…In this study, child's age showed an independent negative association with hemoglobin status. This is consistent to the findings of studies conducted in other low-income countries (Huang et al, 2018;Mohammed, Habtewold, & Esmaillzadeh, 2019). Prolonged exclusive breastfeeding, delayed initiation of complementary foods, and initiating complementary feeding with poorly diversified diet could contribute for the lower hemoglobin levels in infants.…”

Current status of methodological and reporting quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in medicine and health science fields in Ethiopia: Leveraging quantity to improve quality

“…The first overview study, which examined the trends and methodological quality of 35 SR and 17 MA published until 2018, showed that three-fourths of the studies had poor methodological quality. 9 The second and third overview studies were conducted on SR and MA of child nutrition (nine articles included) 10 and birth asphyxia (four articles included) 11 found moderate methodological quality. Recently, the fourth overview study was conducted by our group using 422 SR and MA that were published before December 31, 2021, and provided a detailed bibliometric information on the publication landscape of SR and MA in Ethiopia.…”

“…10.17605/osf.io/vapzx). All the supplementary methods and data are available in the publically open database in OSF (https://osf.io/q5dw2).…”