Infant feeding counseling and knowledge are the key determinants of prelacteal feeding among HIV exposed infants attending public hospitals in Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Despite the fact that breastfeeding promotes optimal health and growth for infants and young children, inappropriate feeding practice, such as prelacteal feeding increases the risk of neonatal death and illness and remains a public health problem in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study assessed the prevalence of prelacteal feeding and associated factors among HIV positive mothers with children aged 7–20 months attending government hospitals in North Gondar zone, northwest Ethiopia. METHODS: An institution based cross-sectional study was conducted from February to March, 2016, at public hospitals of North Gondar Zone. Three hundred sixty-seven HIV positive mothers attending PMTCT clinics in government hospitals during the study period were included in the study. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to investigate factors associated with prelacteal feeding. The Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) with the corresponding 95% Confidence Interval (CI) was used to show the strength of association, and variables with a P-value of <0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS: In this study, the overall prevalence of prelacteal feeding was 19.1% (95% CI: 15–23). According to the multivariate analysis, prelacteal feeding was associated with fathers with no formal education (AOR = 5.85; 95% CI: 2.02, 16.92), lack of infant feeding counseling (AOR = 3.36; 95% CI: 1.27, 8.85), discarding the colostrum (AOR = 5.16; 95% CI: 2.32, 11.45), inadequacy of antenatal care visit (AOR = 0.07; 95% CI: 0.03, 0.15), and high IYCF knowledge (AOR = 0.10; 95% CI: 0.03, 0.30). CONCLUSION: In this study, the prevalence of prelacteal feeding was high. Furthermore, father’s education, colostrum feeding, infant feeding counseling, ANC visit, and IYCF knowledge were significantly associated with prelacteal feeding. As a result, strengthening maternal health care utilization, breastfeeding counseling, and IYCF knowledge are essential to address the high burden of prelacteal feeding.