ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to assess adolescent girls’ knowledge on infant and young child feeding practices in Umuahia Local Government Area in Abia State. This cross sectional analytical study was carried out in Umuahia South Local Government Area in Abia State, Nigeria. The population study comprises of adolescent girls. Multistage sampling was adopted in determining the sample size for the study among 250 adolescent girls were selected from household and schools. Data were collected using researcher-administered questionnaires. The questionnaire was validated by three lecturers in the Department Of Human Nutrition And Dietetics. The questionnaire was used to collect personal data of the adolescent girls and to assess their knowledge on exclusive breastfeeding, continue breastfeeding and complementary feeding. Data analysis was done using IBM statistical software (SPSS) version 20.0. The result shows that 66.6% of with mean and standard deviation of 2.46±0.77 of the adolescent girls had good knowledge,19.2% had advantage knowledge with mean and standard deviation of (62.30±20.74) while 17.2% had poor knowledge on exclusive breastfeeding with mean and standard deviation of 4.98±1.65. The study also showed that adolescent girls (49.6%) with mean and standard deviation of 2.31±0.76 had good knowledge, 32% had an average grade with mean and standard deviation of 58.10±19.32 while 18.4% with mean and standard deviation of 6.39±2.12 had poor knowledge on continued breastfeeding and complementary feeding. There is a positive and strong relationship between knowledge of exclusive breastfeeding and knowledge of complementary feeding (r=0.359, p=0.000). More so, there was a positive and weak relationship between the age of young adolescent and knowledge of exclusive feeding (r=0.220, p=0.003). Based on the findings, it was recommended that nutrition education should be employed at schools to educate the adolescent girls on the importance of exclusive breastfeeding and complementary feeding