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Oladunni OpeyemiCorresponding author Adeleke University, Ede, Osun State Nigeria
Growth monitoring activities has been seen as the most effective ways to identify malnutrition and promotes early child development. This has been linked with long term health and social benefits for the child, family and the community. Over the years, the growth monitoring activities have centred round the health workers. Therefore, the study explored task shifting on Mother/ Caregivers capability to undertake growth monitoring roles at the health Facilities in Oyo State Nigeria. Qualitative methods using focused group discussion and Key informant interview guide were used for data collection among 6-8 groups of 10 mothers and 20 health workers providing the service. The data was analysed using inductive coding to generate the themes. The study showed mothers/caregivers low knowledge on growth monitoring and health workers documented some potential challenges encounter during the activities. The mothers/caregivers show low knowledge on growth monitoring. Therefore, mothers/caregivers were willing to take up the role.
Habulembe Mugode RaiderCorresponding author National Food and Nutrition Commission, Lusaka, Zambia
Introduction In the past several decades, Zambia has suffered high levels of under nutrition particularly stunting among children below 5 years of age. Although appropriate complementary feeding practices are reported to reduce child deaths by 6%, they have not received the adequate attention from programme officers and caregivers in terms of implementation. Objectives The objective was to investigate issues surrounding the common complementary feeding practices practised by caregivers of children below five years in health facilities and areas where high rates of malnutrition admission come from. Design A cross sectional research using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The study used mostly proportions based mostly on global indicators on complementary feeding. Qualitative data was also analysed according to themes of global complementary feeding indicators Setting The study was conducted in five hospitals, namely Arthur Davison, Solwezi Central, Kabwe and Livingstone General, and University Teaching Hospital. Subjects The target populations were mothers whose children were admitted for malnutrition and those with children 0-59 months living in communities with the highest number of malnourished cases admitted to selected hospitals Results About45.2% (190) of caregivers introduced liquids before six months of age and 7.6% (32) after 6 months attributing child thirst, medication and advice from health worker as the main reasons. Slightly above half (54.2% of 224) of mothers/caregivers used cups to feed their babies. The use of feeding bottles was still common (8.2% of 34). Responsibility to feed the child is mostly left to the mother (86.4%, 362). In addition, children were being feed about 2.67 (SD 0-72) per day. Conclusions Child feeding practices were still poor. This contributes to poor child growth and health. More interventions should be planned to improve child care behaviour.