Assessing Exclusive Breastfeeding among Informal Sector Working Mothers in the Adaklu District in the Volta Region of Ghana

Abstract

Background: Breastfeeding is the surest way of feeding infants to their maximum satisfaction and it is believed to help reduce the likelihood of childhood illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhoea. Exclusive breastfeeding in particular promotes the optimal health of the infant in many diverse ways. Although there is evidence on exclusive breastfeeding among professional working nursing mothers in Ghana, there are currently no studies on informal sector working mothers in the Volta region. The study aimed at exploring exclusive breastfeeding among informal working mothers and associated factors in the Adaklu district of the Volta region of Ghana. Methods: The study adopted a facility based cross-sectional quantitative study design where simple random sampling technique was used to select 252 informal sector working women aged 15-49 years who had children between the ages of 6 and 12 months. A structured questionnaire with questions to answer the research questions were administered to participants to collect the necessary data for the study. Data coded and entered into excel was exported into Stata version 15 for cleaning and analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to describe basic characteristics of respondents. Bivariate analysis was employed to examine associations between dependent and independent variables, while logistic regression analysis was used to determine the strength of association between dependent and independent variables while adjusting for other variables with confidence interval set at 95% and p-value of less than 0.05. Results: All 252 respondents in the Adaklu District breastfed their infants during their most recent birth. Out of this number, 68.7% exclusively breastfed. After controlling for potential confounders, factors that significantly predicted exclusive breastfeeding were spouse’s place of residence (AOR=16.1, 95% Cl=1.9-133.2, p= 0.01), and commencement of breastfeeding later than 1 hour but within 24 hours (AOR=0. 03, 95% Cl= 0.009-0.1, = 0.001). Mothers also reported breast engorgement as the most frequent challenge and cracked/core nipples. Conclusion: Promoting exclusive breastfeeding is beneficial for both baby and mother, but its prevalence in this study was not universal. Factors that affect the practice of exclusive breast feeding among women in the informal sector in Adaklu therefore need to be urgently addressed through interventions like public health education as well as increased support at home and in health facilities to exclusively breastfeed.