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Productive Safety Net Program and dietary practice among pregnant women in Kacha Birra district, Southwest Ethiopia: Comparative cross-sectional study

LEMLEM DANIEL BAFFA¹ TEREFE DERSO ¹ ESMAEL ALI MUHAMMAD¹

¹Department of Human Nutrition, Institute of Public Health, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia.

Abstract

Introduction: Morbidity and mortality associated with poor dietary practice among pregnant women are a common public health burdens especially in low income countries like Ethiopia, for which, household food insecurity can be a determinant factor. Productive safety net program(PSNP) is implemented in Ethiopia to alleviate this problem with emphasis on pregnant and lactating mothers even though little is known about the dietary practice among pregnant women in the program user and non-user households. Therefore, this study is aimed to compare the proportion of good dietary practice and associated factors among pregnant women in productive safety net program user and non-user households in Kacha Birra District.

Method: A Community based comparative cross sectional study was conducted in Kacha Birra District from March 12 to April 20, 2019. A total of 715 pregnant women were included by simple random sampling technique. A pretested and structured interviewer administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. Data was entered into EpiData version 3.1 and transferred to Stata version 14 for analysis. Binary logistic regression model was fitted to identify factors associated with dietary practice. Crude odds ratio and adjusted odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were calculated to assess the strength of associations and significance of the identified factors with dietary practice.

Result: The overall proportion of good dietary practice among pregnant women was 14.97% (95%CI: 12.3-17.6), while it was 11.17% (95%CI: 6.5-15.8) and 16.23% (95%CI: 13.09-19.36) among pregnant women in PSNP user and non PSNP user households respectively. Dietary knowledge (AOR=2.64, 95%CI:1.67-4.18), nutrition information (AOR=2.36, 95%CI:1.41-3.95) and husband occupation (AOR=3.51, 95%CI:1.02-12.08) were significantly associated with dietary practice of the pregnant women.

Conclusion and recommendation: The proportion of good dietary practice of the pregnant women in the study area was low with no significant difference among the comparative groups. Dietary knowledge, nutrition information and husband occupation were significantly associated with the dietary practice. So, giving due attention to the improvement of knowledge of the pregnant mothers about nutrition during pregnancy and enhancing their exposure to nutrition information is crucial. Also, strengthening the PSNP is important.

Key words: PSNP, dietary practice, pregnant women, Southwest Ethiopia