Knowledge of Infant Nutrition among Mothers in Enugu State, South Eastern, Nigeria: Implications for Social Work Practice

Christopher N. Ngwu (), Christian A. Ezeh and Christian Iyiani ()

International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development, 2014, vol. 3, issue 1, 117-125

Abstract: Malnutrition is widespread in Nigeria and has persisted at alarmingly high rate. Nutrition problems are at times due to lack of education and knowledge about healthy nutrition behaviours and practices. The purpose of this study was to examine the knowledge of infant nutrition in Enugu State, Nigeria. Ten focus-Group Discussions (FGDS) were conducted with seven (7) persons in each group comprising 5 young groups (18 – 35 years) and 5 old groups (36 years and above). The FGDS were analyzed using a thematic framework. The findings from the qualitative study showed that mothers had a very low perception on ways of improving children’s health. For instance many of them were against feeding their infants with meat or eggs because of their cultural beliefs and had negative perceptions on the exclusive breastfeeding and immunization services in their communities. In view of the above, the findings highlight the need to employ education to correct many of these archaic cultural practices mostly found in Nigerian rural communities and invest in programmes that will enhance the knowledge of infant nutrition among mothers in Nigeria.

Keywords: Nutrition knowledge; immunization services; exclusive-breastfeeding; social work; Enugu (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hrmars.com/hrmars_papers/Knowledge_of_Infan ... l_Work_Practice1.pdf (application/pdf)
http://hrmars.com/hrmars_papers/Knowledge_of_Infan ... l_Work_Practice1.pdf (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hur:ijarpe:v:3:y:2014:i:1:p:117-125

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development from Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hassan Danial Aslam ().