Infant Feeding Practices and Growth Pattern in the First Six Months of Life: A Cross-Sectional Study of Babies Attending the Infant Welfare Clinic of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital

Background: Malnutrition which mostly is a consequence of improper feeding practices has been shown to contribute to over 50% of under-5 mortality. This means that appropriate age-specific nutritional prescription is the surest way of significantly shrinking childhood mortality especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
Aim: This cross-sectional descriptive and analytical study aims to determine the relationship between different infant feeding practices and the nutritional status of apparently healthy infants below six months of age attending the infant welfare clinic of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi.
Methods: Mother infant pairs attending the infant welfare clinic that meets the inclusion criteria were consecutively enrolled over a six months period.
Results: Four hundred infants were enrolled for this study. Educational level (P=0.003), socioeconomic class (P=0.010), occupation (P=0.025) and infants age (P=0.001) significantly determined exclusive breast feeding (EBF) practice. Exclusively breast feed infants showed higher weight and length indices for age and sex compared to infants in other feeding group (P=0.001). Significantly lower proportion of infants in the EBF group (1.9%) compared to infants in the predominant breast feeding (PBF) 5.2% and complementary breast feeding (CBF) 9.7% feeding group showed evidence of under-weight (P=0.015). Binary logistic regression analysis showed that EBF infants were 0.12 and 0.51 times less likely to be under-weight (OR 0.12; CI 0.02-0.93) and stunted (OR 0.51; CI 0.27-0.96) respectively.
Conclusion: Since malnutrition is a major contributor to neonatal and infant’s mortality in Africa, the campaign for EBF practice should not only be sustained but further strengthened as a way of halting and possibly reversing the gloomy trend.