Scaling Up Exclusive Breastfeeding among Mothers in Enugu East Local Government Area Nigeria- A Health Intervention Study

Background Breastfeeding promotion is an important component of the child survival strategies and also optimizes growth of Low Birth Weight (LBW) babies. The main strategy for the promotion of EBF in Nigeria is the WHO/UNICEF baby friendly hospital initiative. However, available evidences show that EBF is hardly practiced by lactating mothers globally. Objective The study therefore aimed to examine the behavioural pattern of mothers to exclusive breastfeeding using informal health workers as educators. Methods The study was a cluster-randomized intervention design involving mothers attending antenatal clinics and who brought their babies to the health centres for routine immunization. A total of 400 mothers were recruited for the study [400 mothers in each cluster selected]. A multistage sampling technique involving four stages was used to select the study sample. Intervention was designed to improve mothers- knowledge and practice of EBF in group A while group B served as control. Results Mothers in this study, for both intervention and control were mostly aged 35-39yrs (32.6 % and 31.4 %) respectively. Results showed that in both intervention and control groups, the source of information were mostly health talk given by the health workers at the facilities (44.8 % and 45.8 %) respectively. The women seemed to know that breast milk is the best food for the baby before the study and this was more in the control group than intervention group. Follow up intervention on the mother to ensure breast feeding is initiated yielded positive results. Available data indicated that breastfeeding was initiated earlier by mothers. Most (50.2 %) mothers initiated breast feeding within 30 minutes of delivery due to the intervention given to them as against 30 % who do such before the intervention. Conclusions The study suggest that health policies that legitimize and acknowledge the practice of informal health workers [IHWs] and integrating them into specific health programmes in the Nigerian healthcare delivery system can be adopted. There is need for registration of all IHWs so they can be better organised and easily accessed.