Effect of Nutritional Knowledge of Mothers/Caregivers on The Nutritional Status of Their Under-Five Year Old Children in WA Municipal, Ghana
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Date
2017-07
Authors
Aminbo, A.Z.
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Abstract
Introduction: Nutritional knowledge refers to knowledge of concepts and processes related to nutrition and health. A mothers’ perceptive of fundamental nutrition and health strongly affects the dietary habits of their children since they are the top principal care providers of their children. The various features of nutritional knowledge include: exclusive breast feeding, required age for starting complementary foods and the type of complementary foods to introduce, frequency of giving foods during the day, types of foods to give during diarrhea and mothers’/caregivers’ perceptions of nutritional state of their children. The study determined the relationship between nutritional knowledge of mothers/caregivers and nutritional status of their children under 5 years.
Method: A cross sectional study with 100 mothers as respondents was done in the WA Regional Hospital using a structured questionnaire to collect information on their nutritional knowledge. Then 100 children 6-59 months attending growth monitoring in the WA Regional Hospital were assessed for nutritional status using anthropometric measurements.
Results: Results showed that majority of the mothers/caregivers (56%) were married and were between the ages of 29-39 years. Most of the mothers had attained some level of education: 50% of the mothers had tertiary education, 37% had either primary/junior/senior high school education or only 13% had no form of education at all. Majority of the children who took part in the study were within the age range of 6-12 months old and female children (55%) formed a greater part of the population. Most mothers (76%) interviewed had very good nutrition knowledge, 13% had good nutrition knowledge, 7% had excellent nutrition knowledge and just 4% had fair knowledge in nutrition.
The prevalence rates of stunting, wasting and underweight among the children were 17%, 5% and 2% respectively. Children (10%) within the age range of 12-23 months old were more stunted; those within the same age range were found to be severely wasted (6%). However children (2%) within the age range of 24-35 months old were more underweight as compared to the other age groups. Also male children (9%) were found to be more stunted than female children within the study population.
Conclusion: The study concluded that mothers had very good nutrition knowledge. Generally, the nutritional status of the children was normal except for stunting which was higher than wasting and underweight. The study revealed no significant association between mothers’/caregivers’ nutrition knowledge and the nutritional status of their children. Even though, majority of the mothers/caregivers appeared to have good nutrition knowledge, it did not seem to transform into appropriate infant feeding practices since prevalence of stunting, wasting and under-weight were of concern. Thus, there was no effect of the mothers/caregiver’s nutrition knowledge on the nutritional status of their children.
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Keywords
Nutritional Status, WA Municipal, Ghana, Mothers/Caregivers