Browsing by Author "Zelalem, Ashenafi"

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    Effect of nutrition education by health professionals on pregnancy specific nutrition knowledge and practice of pregnant women
    (Addis Abeba Universty, 2016-06) Zelalem, Ashenafi; Shiferaw, Solomon (PhD))
    Background: Evidence show that nutrition counseling during pregnancy has significant impact on dietary habit of pregnant women, and on maternal and birth outcome of pregnancy. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that health care providers need to give adequate, specific and acceptable nutrition related advice to pregnant women during every visit of antenatal care (ANC).However, studies show that health professionals working at antenatal clinics have insufficient knowledge level and do not provide proper nutrition education. As a result, pregnant women are generally ill equipped when it comes to decisions on appropriate nutrition during pregnancy. Objective: Toassess the effect of training health professionals on the knowledge and practice of pregnant women on appropriate nutrition during pregnancy in Akaki Kality Sub-city, Addis Ababa. Methodology: A before-after cohort study was conducted on 406 pregnant women and 24 ANC providers in Akaki Kality Sub-city, Addis Ababa.A training was given to 24 health professionals in 8 health institutions based on prepared module after which they provided ANC clients with nutrition counseling. Knowledge and counseling practice of Health professionals was assessed before training while knowledge and practice of pregnant women on pregnancy specific nutrition was assessed before and after receiving counseling from their trained providers. Data was managed using SPSS 20. Change in knowledge and practice of pregnant women on nutrition during pregnancy was analyzed by using paired t-test and 95% Confidence Interval of proportions. Results: The response rate of this study was 92.3% for health professionals and 95.3% for pregnant women. Two third of ANC providers were knowledgeable on nutrition during pregnancy but only 4.2% practiced good nutrition counseling to their clients. Other pregnant women were the source of information for pregnant women on Nutrition during pregnancy (59.1%). The mean knowledge and practice score of pregnant women was 5.5 (SD +2) out of9 and 6.2 (SD + 2) out of 11 respectively. After the implementation of the nutrition education program the proportion of pregnant women with knowledge on nutrition during pregnancy increased from 53.9 (95%CI: 48.9, 58.8) to 97% (95%CI: 94.8, 98.5) while the pregnancy specific dietary practice of the pregnant women increased from 46.8% (95%CI 41.8, 51.7) to 83.7% (95%CI: 79.8, 87.2). iv Conclusions and Recommendations: ANC providers have fair knowledge on nutrition during pregnancy but were not providing nutrition counseling to pregnant women on ANC follow up visits. Nutrition counseling to pregnant women with trained ANC providers improves knowledge and practice of ANC attendants. So attention should be given to promoting nutrition education at the ANC for pregnant women to get reliable and accurate information from health professionals