Impacts of Eating Behaviors of Pregnant and Lactating Women on the Nutritional Status of Children under 6 Months in the Lake-Chad Region

Background: Malnutrition causes real problems, especially for the survival and growth of children on the one hand and for the health of pregnant and lactating women on the other.

Purpose: The purpose of our study is to evaluate the impact of pregnant and lactating women's eating behaviors on the nutritional status of children under 6 months in the Lake Chad Region.

Methods: A cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study of 380 patients including 106 pregnant women 137 lactating women and 137 children under 6 months of age identified in few hospitals and health centers in the Lake Chad Region was conducted from October 1 to November 30, 2017, using a questionnaire administered to pregnant and lactating women after their consent. The 24-hour recall and the frequency of consumption of the food groups allowed us to evaluate the food intake of the surveyed women. The nutritional status of mothers and children was assessed by anthropometric and biochemical measures. The data was analyzed using the SPSS version 20 software. The Chi-square test allowed us to establish the correlations between the different variables at a significance level set at 5%.

Results: This study found that only 8.5% and 10.9% of pregnant and lactating women respectively had satisfactory dietary diversity scores. The exclusive breastfeeding rate was 11.7% and the immediate initiation rate for breastfeeding after delivery was 50.4%. The children had 19% wasting, 31.4% stunting, 34.3% underweight and 56.4% anemia. Respectively, 34% and 29% of pregnant and lactating women were malnourished; 17% and 10.2% were at risk of malnutrition, with 60.6 % and 50% prevalence of anemia respectively.

Conclusion: The modifiable factors that significantly influenced the nutritional status of children were: maternal feeding behaviors such as low dietary diversity scores and daily meals lack of hygiene and sanitary follow-up, underweight and presence of children anemia in mothers.