EC Nutrition

Background: The scheme youngsters are fed has a huge impact on their development. Poor breastfeeding and infant feeding practices have a negative impact on children's health and nutritional status.

Objective: The study's aim was to analyze mothers’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding supplemental feeding of children aged 6 - 23 months in Shashemene City, Oromia Ethiopia.

Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted from January 1-January 28 using a two-stage sampling procès to chose 536 women with children aged 6 to 23 months for the study. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software were used to analyze the data. The characteristics related with complementary feeding (CF) practice were identified using logistic regression, and statistical significance was determined at p-value of less than 0.05.

Results: This study found that complementary food was first introduced at the age of 6 months, 353 (68.4%) and 167 (32.1%) at greater and less than 6 months age with bottle feeding (AOR: 0.27, 95% CI: (0.13, 0.55)). Sources of information about the advantages of breast milk (AOR: 4.34, 95% CI (1.96, 9.60)), minimum dietary diversity (AOR: 2.21, 95% CI (1.01, 4.85)), knowledge about iron-rich foods (AOR: 0.029, 95% CI (0.04, 0.21)), knowledge about iodine-rich foods (AOR: 0.022, 95% CI (0.03, 0.16)) were discovered to be independent predictors of mother’s knowledge on appropriate infant feeding.

Conclusion: Mothers' knowledge about the timing of CF practices is low in this study. Botte feeding, sources of information about the benefits of breast Milk, a minimum dietary diversity, knowledge about infant and young child feeding were the indépendant factors that significantly associated with mother's knowledge of appropriate infant and young child feeding practices.

 Keywords: Mother’s Knowledge; Attitude; Complementary Feeding Practice; Oromia

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