Manjubala Dash*

Professor in Nursing, Mother Theresa Post Graduate and Research Institute of Health Sciences (MTPG & RIHS), Puducherry, India

*Corresponding Author: Manjubala Dash, Professor in Nursing, Mother Theresa Post Graduate and Research Institute of Health Sciences (MTPG & RIHS), Puducherry, India.

Received: July 23, 2018; Published: August 10, 2018

Citation: Manjubala Dash. “Infant and Young Child Feeding Practice: Health Outcome of the Children ”. Acta Scientific Paediatrics 1.2 (2018): 17-18.

“Children are our future, and their mothers are its guardians”

Healthy food and adequate nutrition is the Right of every child. Malnutrition is the leading cause of Childhood morbidity and mortality every year. Not only this, malnutrition further causes physical and mental disable among children in early year of life. It causes irreversible physical and cognitive damage among below 2 years children due to poor food practices. The consequences of under nutrition affect them during their adolescent and adult life and continue to the next generation.

As per the World Bank report India has highest prevalence of Malnutrition. India stands in 20^th place amongst the leading countries for hunger situation reports by Global Hunger Index 2015. Every night one out of every two children goes to bed on an empty stomach. Malnutrition is one of the factors which suppress the growth of India. It is prevalent in rural and tribal areas and became a silent killer, silent emergency, invisible enemy for the people who cannot access to adequate food. The main reason for under-nutrition are faulty feeding technique, inadequate knowledge on Infant and Young child Nutrition practices etc.

As per the World Bank report India has highest prevalence of Malnutrition. India stands in 20^th place amongst the leading countries for hunger situation reports by Global Hunger Index 2015. Every night one out of every two children goes to bed on an empty stomach. Malnutrition is one of the factors which suppress the growth of India. It is prevalent in rural and tribal areas and became a silent killer, silent emergency, invisible enemy for the people who cannot access to adequate food. The main reason for under-nutrition are faulty feeding technique, inadequate knowledge on Infant and Young child Nutrition practices etc.

Study conducted by Edem M., et al. 2016 among 182 malnourished and 189 well-nourished under-fives and their mothers highlighted that the main reasons are shorter duration of exclusive breastfeeding, early initiation of complementary feeding, mixed feeding, bottle feeding and inadequate intake of fruits and other nutrients etc.

Phengxay., et al. 2007 conducted a study in Luang prabang province reported that poor knowledge of mothers about nutritious diet, lack of education and avoiding some of special food for the children like animal foods are the reason for malnutrition.

Proper feeding technique and optimal infant and young child feeding practices is one of the best and cost effective intervention to combat Malnutrition among children. Data shows that 13 percent of child hood deaths could be prevented only through exclusive breastfeeding the child upto 6months and continue feeding for 2years along with timely initiation of appropriate complementary feeding which helps to prevent additional 6% of the under five death among the children.

Diagnosis

All the health personnel should aware about the WHO growth chart to detect any abnormality and early detection of malnutrition with the help of the reference curve. Growth curve assessment is a good indicator not only for the child’s growth assessment but also help to maintain quality of life of an entire population. Growth is the global indicator for child’s wellbeing.

Recommendations

• All the mothers need to be counseled to initiate breastfeeding as early as possible after birth of the baby, at least within first hour.
• Mother’s should know the importance of exclusive breastfeeding and timely initiation of appropriate complementary feeding.
• Cost effective and home prepared, easily available in their locality to be encouraged for the healthy and adequate nutrition.
• All the family must plan properly their family. Couples’ must be protected and should know about the proper spacing techniques to have their limited family.
• It is very important to maintain the environmental hygiene to prevent infection and malnutrition among the children.
• Socioeconomic status of the rural people to be ensured to fight against malnutrition.

Copyright: © 2018 Manjubala Dash. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.