Assessment Of Knowledge,Attitude And Practice Regarding Exclusive Breastfeeding Among Mother's Visit In Immunization Clinic Of Paropakar Maternity And Women's Hospital,Kathmandu,Nepal

Background:Exclusive breastfeeding(EBF)is the ideal for baby for their first six months of life from where baby can get whole nutrients required to their growth and development.EBF defined as feeding infant only breast milk for first 6 months of life,not even sips of water.Objective:The purpose of this study was to assess the status of mother's knowledge,attitude and practice regarding exclusive breastfeeding in Paropakar Maternity and Women's Hospital,Kathmandu,Nepal.Methods:A cross sectional study was conducted among 423 mothers attending immunization clinics in Paropakar Maternity and Women's Hospital(PMWH),Kathmandu,Nepal.Data collection was done in between July 2018 to August 2018 by using a non-probability purposive sampling technique.Data was collected by conducting face-to-face interview using structured interviewer administered questionnaire.Questionnaire was developed in two parts,first part included the sciodemographic varibles like age of mother and baby,educational level,maternal occupation and second part included the questions related to knowledge,attitude,practice(KAP)about EBF.While categorical variables were presented as frequencies,percentages,Fisher's Excat test and Chi square test,all test was done to analyzed data and to checked the association between different variables.The confidence interval was 95% and the level of significance was p-value < 0.05.Results:The total number included respondents in this study was 423 out of which 62.4% of the mothers had heard about EBF and 42% of mothers source of information about EBF was health institutations.61% of mothers had good knowledge about EBF duration that baby must feed till 6 months.52.5% of mothers didn't knew that EBF could prevent them from pregnancy only 14% of mothers had some knowledge about it.Overall mothers had positive attitude towards EBF where 66.7% of mothers felt that EBF is better than other artificial feeding.Most of the mothers had breast feed their last baby but cann't continue EBF practice till the end of the 6 months as needed where the chi-square test result also showed that significant association between the maternal occupation;maternal educational level and EBF/Non-EBF mothers where pvalues were less than 0.005(P-value= 0.001;0.004).Conclusion:The majority of mothers knew about EBF and had positive attitude towards EBF but about practice their was slightly low rate and didn't practice EBF till six months on working mothers.So we suggest the government level as well as private organizations to provide the maternity leave for six months for breast feeding and for health intituations emphasis more program for mothers including family members on EBF with its benefits for both mothers and baby.