Abstract

Adequate nutrition during infancy and early childhood is essential to ensure the health, growth and development of the child. The objective of the present study was to assess IYCF practices among children aged to 6 months to 2 years in hospital based prospective observational study. Materials and Method: An urban tertiary care hospital based prospective observational study was conducted among 905 caregivers with 6-24 months old children from June 2021 to may 2022. the simple random sampling technique was adopted to determine participants of study. IYCF practise was assessed using WHO criteria. Results: Prevalence of exclusive breast feeding, prelacteal feeds and bottle feeding is 38%, 33% and 33.5% respectively. Appropriate timely complementary feeding initiation was only 46%.60% of mothers gave MMF in age 6-8 months and it decreased to 37% in age group 9-23 months. 31.9% children had minimal dietary diversity and 13.9% had minimal acceptable diet. Conclusion: Infant and young child feeding practices were not optimal. Therefore there is a need for strengthening the promotion on IYCF practices during antenatal, postnatal care and during vaccination visit and also using mass media for giving emphasis for complementary feeding practices to mother and entire family

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