Factors of Exclusive Breastfeeding Practice among Women Working In the Formal and Informal Sectors
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Date
2020-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Breast milk is the best food and the safest option to ensure good health and ideal growth of
young children. Exclusive breastfeeding indicates that a child should be fed breast milk alone
during the first six months of life. However, 41% of Ethiopian infants do not receive
exclusive breastfeeding and the median duration of this breastfeeding was 2.9 in months in
Addis Ababa. Therefore, this study aims to determine the practice and associated factors of
exclusive breastfeeding focusing on working mothers in Bole and Addis Ketema sub-cities,
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 389
randomly selected breastfeeding mothers with infants aged 6 to 11-months old from June to
July 2020. A semi-structured interview-based questionnaire was used for data collection. The
data were entered and analyzed using STATA version 14.2 and R version 3.6.1. Descriptive
statistics, t-tests for difference of proportions, and multilevel binary logistic regression were
applied in the analysis. A total of 389 (192 formally and 197 informally employed) mothers
were interviewed. The overall mean and median duration of exclusive breastfeeding was 127
and 120 days, respectively. The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding practice for all
working mothers was 46.53% (40.10% formally and 52.79% informally employed). The
multilevel analysis revealed that working mothers with cesarean delivery (AOR = 0.32, 95%
CI: 0.184, 0.563), low birth weight (AOR = 0.30, 95% CI: 0.134, 0.689), and insufficient
milk production (AOR = 0.364, 95% CI: 0.216, 0.614) were significantly less likely to
engage in exclusive breastfeeding while mothers with high breastfeeding support (AOR =
12.03, 95% CI: 5.593, 25.910) was significantly more likely to engage in exclusive
breastfeeding. Maternal type of employment (being formal and informal) showed an effect on
exclusive breastfeeding with intra-class correlation (ICC) = 0.0632 (0.0067, 0.4006). The
overall median duration of EBF was short. However, informally employed mothers breastfed
better than formally employed ones. Therefore, there is a need in providing childcare services
in the workplace, working on breastfeeding support, and designing strategies to better support
formally employed mothers are recommended.
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Keywords
Breastfeeding, Exclusive breastfeeding, Formal and informal employment