Nutritional knowledge of Mothers and nutritional status of their children 6-59 Months under Malezi Bora Programme in Kawangware Sub Location, Dagoretti, Nairobi County

Abstract

Malezi Bora is a program by the Ministry of Health that ensures heightened promotion of routine and far to reach areas. In the programme, mothers are given nutritional knowledge to help them utilize the health facilities and services provided to ensure continued growth and normalcy in nutritional status of their children. This study was therefore designed to determine the nutritional knowledge of mothers and nutritional status of their children 6-59 months under Malezi Bora programme in Kawangware, a slum in Nairobi. A cross-sectional survey was carried out with 300 mothers as respondents using a structured questionnaire to collect information on their nutritional knowledge. Then 322 children 6-59 months were assessed for nutritional status using anthropometric measurements. Results showed that the age composition of the study population had more persons less than15 and more than 15-65 years for both sexes in the household. Majority of mothers were married. Most of them were housewives. Majority had attained primary and secondary levels of education. The study indicates that majority of mothers interviewed had knowledge of Malezi Bora programme although most of them did not have knowledge of the any activities of the programme. The prevalence of stunting (Height-for-age) among the children was 25.4%, wasting (weight-for-height) was 4% and underweight (weight-for-age) was 7.1%. Severe stunting was significantly (p<0.03) higher among males compared to females. The study concluded that mothers’ nutritional knowledge exists but it is low. Generally the nutritional status of the children was normal, except for stunting which was significantly higher than wasting and underweight, though lower than the national coverage.