BACKGROUND

Child health in developing countries including Nepal is a matter of serious concern as the prevalence of malnutrition among children continues to be high with 48.6% of children under five in Nepal being underweight. Since infant feeding practices adopted by mothers play a major role in influencing health of these children, there is a need to study the infant feeding practices prevalent in different areas in order to have pragmatic approaches to solve this problem.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A cross sectional study was conducted among mothers who attended the immunization clinics of 18 wards of Pokhara municipality area. They were interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaire on various aspects of infant feeding.

RESULT

A total of 168 mothers were interviewed and prevalence of breastfeeding was 99.4% (167). Only 43.5% of the mothers initiated breastfeeding within one hour of birth and 60.5% were practicing exclusive breastfeeding at 5 months. Almost 40% of the mothers started complementary feeding before the recommended age of 6 months and 22.5 % delayed introduction of complementary feeding beyond the recommended age.

CONCLUSION

Breast feeding practices adopted by mothers of Pokhara urban area are still lacking in terms of late initiation of and early starting of complementary feeding. There is a need to educate the mothers regarding proper infant feeding practices.