Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on Exclusive Breastfeeding of Child Bearing Mothers in Boditi town, Southern Ethiopia: A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Breastfeeding is accepted as the natural infant feeding, with provision of benefits both for the mothers and infants. World Health Organization (WHO) recommends timely initiation of breastfeeding after birth and only feeding breast milk to infants during the first 6 months of life. It was estimated that exclusive breastfeeding can reduce infant deaths by 13%. The practice of exclusive breastfeeding is suboptimal in many parts of Ethiopia to a varied extent. Factors associated with exclusive breastfeeding practice and the proportion of its practice was not well documented in Boditi town. Therefore, this study was aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice on exclusive breastfeeding of childbearing mothers in Boditi town, Southern Ethiopia.Methods: The community based descriptive cross-sectional study and systematic random sampling technique was used to assess knowledge, attitude and practice on exclusive breast feeding among mothers of childbearing age. A total of 351 respondents were taken and data was collected by face-to-face interview with structured questionnaire.Results: The study result showed that 331(94.3%) respondents knew what EBF mean while 298(85%) don’t think BF limit activity and 197(56.1%) had fed EBF for the first 6 month. Conclusions: This study has revealed that the majority of mothers in childbearing age of study area had high level of favorable knowledge, attitude and practice towards exclusive breastfeeding. This study documented a discrepancy between mother’s knowledge, attitude and practice of EBF. It is therefore recommended that efforts should be made by all concerned bodies to support and promote EBF in addition further large scale research needs to be conducted to identify determinant factors contributing to the discrepancy of practicing EBF in the study area.

Keywords: Exclusive Breastfeeding, Practice, Attitude, Knowledge, Assessment, Southern Ethiopia