Abstract

Poor breast feeding and complementary feeding practices together with high rate of morbidity from infectious diseases are the prime proximate causes of malnutrition in the first two years of life. Sub optimal breast feeding practice, poor quality complementary food, not timely introducing complementary food as well as infrequent, unsupervised feeding and contamination of food and feeding utensils leads to morbidity from infectious disease and malnutrition. The main objective of this study is to assess maternal Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards initiation of complementary feeding among mothers of under two years children. Community based cross sectional study was conducted from May 15-30, 2015. Simple random sampling technique was employed to select 205 households. Data were collected by using structured interviewer administered questionnaires and analyzed by using SPSS version 16.0 software and the results of the study was presented by using text, tables and charts. Among 205 respondents 81% of mothers knew about complementary feeding, 71.7% knew the exact time to initiate complementary food but only 39% of mothers started complementary feeding for their children at six month. Majority of mothers (62%) had positive attitude while the rest 38% had negative attitude towards timely initiation of complementary feeding. About 38.8% of mothers were given a complementary food for their children by using bottle and 29.4% feed their children by usinghand. The study shows that more than half of the respondents have good knowledge on timely initiation of complementary feeding. Despite this, there is a great problem on the practice of complementary feeding. Therefore, there is a need of community based complementary feeding intervention as a part of primary health program to bring positive behavioral change on the practice of complementary food in the community.

Keywords: Complementary feeding; Mothers; Knowledge; Attitude; Practice