Assessment of Prevalence of Exclusive Breast Feeding Practice and Associated Factors among Under Six-Month-Old Children Selected Woreda South Nation Nationality of People Regional State, Ethiopia, 2016

Back ground: Exclusive Breast Feeding is feeding the infant only breast milk for six month. EBF practice is observed as a major public health intervention to reduce the child mortality and morbidity. It also, can prevent 1.4 million deaths worldwide among children under five every year. Therefore the main objective of this study was to assess prevalence of exclusive breast feeding practice and associated factors among under sixmonth-old children selected Woreda South Nation Nationality of People Regional State, Ethiopia, 2016. Methods: A community-based cross sectional study was conducted in Feb 19/ 2016march 20/2016. A total of 421 mothers were randomly selected. Semi-structured and pretested questionnaires were administered to collect data. One day training was given for data collectors and supervisors. The collected data was entered in to Epi info version7, cleaned and transported to SPSS windows version 20 then analyzed. The crude and adjusted odds ratio (AOR) together with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals was computed. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was computed to identify factors associated EBF. A P-value <0.05 were considered to declare a result as statistically significant in this study. Results: In this study, prevalence of exclusive breast feeding in the study area was 64.8 % [95% CI: 2.3 (61, 69.5)]. The independent predictors of Exclusive breast feeding practice on the multivariate analysis include age of mother, who have age between 2637 year’s [AOR: 0.592, 95% CI: (0.373, 0.938)] and age between 38-49 year [AOR: 0.557, 95% CI: (0.255, 0.989)], Availability information of exclusive breast feeding [AOR: 0.432, 95% CI: (0.271,0.687)] and had adequate knowledge of mother [AOR: 2.508, 95% CI: (1.475,4.265)] were significantly associated with Exclusive breast feeding practice. Conclusion: In this study, the prevalence of exclusive breast feeding practice was lower than that of the previous Ethiopian health sector development plan fourth achievement of, 70%, next five years health sector transformation plan two targeted for, 72% by the end of 2020 and WHO recommendation, 90% [10]. But, higher than that of national prevalence of, 52%, reported in the EDHS. Interventions to promote age of mothers’, Availability information during ANC and adequate knowledge about exclusive breast feeding. Recommendations should be include encourage ANC and PNC service utilization, strengthening nutrition counseling during antenatal and postnatal sessions.