Article Text
PDF
Abstract
Objective To assess the prevalence of food insecurity (FI) and its predictors among lactating mothers in Ataye District, North Shoa Zone, Central Ethiopia.
Design A community-based cross-sectional study design was used.
Setting Two urban and four rural randomly selected kebeles of the Ataye District in Ethiopia.
Participants Out of 635 participants, 612 lactating mothers aged 15–49 years participated from February to April 2018. Mothers who lived for at least 6 months and above in the district were included, and mothers who were not able to respond to an interview were excluded. A single lactating mother per household was included. Lactating mothers in the households were selected using a cluster sampling technique. The number of lactating mothers found in each kebele was taken from family folder documentation.
Primary outcome The prevalence and predictors of food insecurity.
Results The prevalence of FI among lactating mothers was 36.8%. No formal education (adjusted OR (AOR) =1.82, 95% CI 1.13 to 2.92), no income-generating activities (AOR=3.39, 95% CI 2.05 to 5.64), no home gardening practice (AOR=5.65, 95% CI 3.51 to 9.08), alcohol use by husbands (AOR=2.02, 95% CI 1.25 to 3.24), low minimum dietary diversity score (AOR=2.94, 95% CI 1.88 to 4.57), less than three frequencies of meals (AOR=3.97, 95% CI 1.65 to 9.54) and three meals only per day (AOR=1.86, 95% CI 1.08 to 3.17) were significant predictors of FI of mothers.
Conclusion The prevalence of FI was high in the study area. No formal education, no income-generating activities, no home gardening practice, alcohol use by husbands, low minimum dietary diversity score, fewer than three frequencies of meals and three meals only per day were independent predictors of FI. Therefore, increasing home gardening, decreasing alcohol intake, increasing dietary diversity and performing income-generating activities are highly recommended to reduce FI.
- nutritional support
- public health
- public health
- nutrition
- nutrition & dietetics
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors LG: Participated in the conception and design of the study, performed the data collection, performed the statistical analysis and served as the lead author of the manuscript. GE: Participated in the design of the study, revised subsequent drafts of the paper and contributed to the finalisation of the manuscript. AM, YAA, SD, HA, AT and WAB: Assisted in the design of the study, statistical and intellectual analysis, and revised subsequent drafts of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Obtained.
Ethics approval Ethical approval was obtained from the College of Health and Medical Science Institutional Health Research Ethics Review Committee (IHRERC) of Haramaya University on 15 January 2018 (number Ref C/AC/R/D/897/18).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement The data sets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.