Level of exclusive breastfeeding and its enabling factors among lactating women who delivered in health facilities of Asosa town, Ethiopia: a cross sectional study.

Background: Despite the enormous benefit of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) to mothers and infants, the practice of exclusive breastfeeding is globally low. In sub-Saharan Africa and Ethiopia, the prevalence of EBF stands at 35% and 59%, respectively. The low EBF practice in Ethiopia as well as in the studied region calls for further study and thus we studied the EBF practice in the study area since little is known about its current magnitude and factors influencing its practice for some programmatic improvements.

Methods: A facility based cross-sectional study linked to a community was conducted from June-July 2019 among 412 mothers who had antenatal follow-up and delivered in health facilities of Asosa town over a period of one year prior to the study. Data on socio demographic characteristics and other important variables were collected through face to face interview while gestational age in weeks was recorded from their medical chart by trained health extension workers in accordance with relevant ethical guidelines and regulations. The collected data were then cleaned and entered into Epi-data software version 3.02. Analysis was done by SPSS version 20. Binary and multivariate logistic regression were performed to identify the contributing factors. P-value of less than 0.05 and 95% confidence interval was considered to determine statistical significance.

Results: Of the 412 respondents, the majority (88.1%) were multi-gravida and above. Slightly higher than a quarter (26.0%) and over half (55.4%) had neither received antenatal nor postnatal care. The proportion of mothers who exclusively breastfed their children was 76.0% and the overall aggregated good practice of EBF score was 64.1%. Mothers who completed primary school [AOR = 4.5; 95% CI = 1.1,18.2], had four or more ANC [AOR = 1.8;95CI = 0.79-0.98], and postnatal follow-up [AOR = 0.21;95% CI = 0.07-0.67], and had male infants [AOR = 2.3; 95% CI = 1.0-4.95] were among the factors influencing the exclusive breastfeeding practice score.

Conclusion: While three in four mothers exclusively breastfed their newborns and about two-thirds had good EBF score, the observed women's retention on the continuum of the maternal care pathway is low with one in four had no antenatal and over half had no postnatal care which are important derivers for EBF practice. To improve the EBF score and narrow the observed maternal and child health disparities, it is essential to promote maternal education and increase the recomended coverage of antenatal and postnatal care for mothers.