IMPACT OF MATERNAL BREASTFEEDING PRACTICES ON NUTRITIONAL STATUS IN CHILDREN UNDER TWO YEARS IN BURUNDI

Current breastfeeding patterns remain well below the level recommended by WHO and UNICEF in the following world: initiating breastfeeding immediately after the birth of the child; Exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months; Give a complementary food starting from six months; The child should continue breastfeeding up to two years or beyond. In Burundi, there is some contrast between breastfeeding, which is clearly at an acceptable level, and the rate of chronic malnutrition is increasing, the age of the child reaching 45% between 9-11 months (DHS 2010). It is in a context that a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study with a 95% significance level was carried out with the aim of measuring the impact of breastfeeding practices on the nutrition of children under two years in Burundi.

The present study used the data from the Household Survey for the Monitoring and Evaluation of the Impact of Support to the System of Reimbursement of the Minimum Health Services Package in Burundi (Edition 2012) organized in Burundi by ISTEEBU in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health and the fight against AIDS. Thus a database made up of 2463 children under the age of 2 years was extracted in a total of 7322 thanks to STATA and SPSS software.

At the end of this study, malnutrition among children under 2 years  was found to be 26.8%. The results of the bivariate descriptive analyzes also show that the variables of residence, Level of education, province, age of child, sex of child, consumption of colostrum influences the nutritional status of child under two years . Malnutrition is very high in (97% and 3% respectively), children from women without education (56.0%) and children from primary (40.5%) mothers with high levels of malnutrition (3.5%), Cankuzo, Muyinga, Kayanza and Ngozi provinces have high proportions of malnutrition of 8.8%, 8%, 7.3% and 7.3% compared to the municipalities of Bujumbura-mairie (2%), Makamba (3.9%) and Bururi (3.9%); The proportion of children without this colostrum suffering from malnutrition is almost 6.05% (3.33%) of those consumed.

The analysis of the results shows that there is a significant gap between the age groups of malnourished children. These proportions are 64.6%, 29.35% and 6.05%, respectively, in the 11 to 23 months, 6 to 11 months and the less than 6 months groups. Malnutrition increases as the child grows.

This study shows that the hierarchy of the most important explanatory factors for malnutrition among infants in descending order is the following: child sex, household living standards, breastfeeding period, and consumption of the colostrum and finally the age of the child.

Key word: breastfeeding; malnutrition ; colostrom; sex; age; child; Burundi