Infant feeding, growth monitoring and the double burden of malnutrition among children aged 6 months and their mothers in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Kaldenbach, Siri; Engebretsen, Ingunn Marie Stadskleiv; Haskins, Lyn; Conolly, Catherine; Horwood, Christiane
Peer reviewed, Journal article
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https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3112838Utgivelsesdato
2021Metadata
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Abstract South Africa has a documented high prevalence of stunting and increasing obesity in children as well as obesity in adults. The double burden of malnutrition, which can be on an individual-, household- or population level, has implications for both health and the economic development of a community and country. This paper describes a large-scale survey (N = 774) of infant feeding, growth monitoring and anthropometry among mother and child pairs aged 6 months of age in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa, conducted between January and August 2017. Among children, a large increase in the prevalence of stunting and obesity was seen between birth and 6 months of age increasing from 9.3% to 21.7% and 4.0% to 21.0%, respectively. 32.1% of the mothers were overweight [body mass index (BMI): 25.0-29.9] and 28.4% had obesity grade 1 (BMI: 30-<40). Although most mothers (93%; 563/605) initiated breastfeeding, the introduction of other foods started early with 17.6% (56/319) of the mothers having started giving other fluids or food to their child within the first month. At 6 months 70.6% (427/605) children were still breastfed and 23.5% were exclusively breastfed. In addition, we found that length measurements were done less frequently than weight measurements between birth and 6 months, on average 2.2 (SD: 1.3) versus 5.8 (SD: 1.5) times. Moreover, there is a need for improvement of health worker training and understanding regarding anthropometric measurements when assessing malnutrition in children in the clinics. Early detection and improved infant feeding practices are key in preventing both stunting and obesity in children. Keywords: South Africa; anthropometry; breastfeeding; complementary feeding; growth monitoring; infant and child nutrition; malnutrition. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2021 The Authors. Maternal & Child Nutrition published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd