Abstract:
Background: Children in food insecure households are at significantly higher risk malnutrition. Tigray region is affected by recurrent food security problems having stunting levels are above the national average. It is important to see a composite indicator that tracks the extent to which adequate child feeding are being met and compare it with the potential problem of the region.
Objective: To assess the prevalence of minimum acceptable diet among children 6-23 month and its association with household food security (access) status in Tigray 2014
Method: 309 Community based cross sectional data received from alive and thrive project 2014. Frequencies and cross tabulation were used to summarize descriptive statistics of the data. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models were used for analysis. Variables having p-value of less than 0.05 was considered as significantly associated with the dependent variables.
Result: Out of the total study population (n=309) minimum acceptable diet was 16.2% (95%CI=12, 20.7). 49.8% of household are food secured (AOR=0.352 ) after adjusting other significant factors like child age, sex, wealth index, marital status, ANC follow up ,exposure to media, household dietary diversity.
Conclusion and Recommendation: - The finding of this study suggests minimum acceptable diet good as compared to other studies. Household with food security are less likely to practice minimum acceptable diet. However, there is inverse association between household food insecurity and nutritional status of children. Our results suggest that nutritional status of children is not only influenced by access food but also by other non-food factors. An integrated approach and not just access to food is needed to address feeding practice of children 6-23 month in Tigray.
.......................................... Thesis available at ACIPH Library