Abstract:

Background: Around the age of 6 months an infant need for energy and nutrients starts to exceed what is provided breast milk, and complementary foods are necessary to meet those needs. Research on complementary feeding practices, particularly in Africa and low- and middle-income countries like Tanzania, reveals several gaps. Existing studies often lack an understanding of cultural, economic, and contextual differences that influence feeding practices. Diverse and locally relevant feeding practices are often overlooked, while longitudinal studies tracking feeding habits over time are limited. Behavioral factors, such as maternal beliefs, remain insufficiently explored, and there's a need for rigorous evaluation of intervention effectiveness. Additionally, the impact of gender roles, socioeconomic factors, and cultural sensitivities on feeding decisions requires deeper investigation. Improved data collection methods and attention to early-life nutrition are necessary to comprehensively address these gaps and enhance child nutrition outcomes.

Objective: To determine the complementary feeding practices among women attending clinic at Makongoro Health Centre in Mwanza, Tanzania.

Methodology: this was a cross-sectional hospital-based study done at Makongoro health Centre from May to July 2023. Structured questionnaires were administered to all participants to evaluate the appropriateness and factors that led to early initiation of complementary feeds to children below the age of six month. SPSS version 20 was used to analyze the data.

Results: The study involved 384 participants were majority were aged between 6 to 9 months, the study revealed that 78 (20.3%) of the children were initiated complementary feeding before the age of 6 months, 116 (30.2%) initiated when they turned the age of 6 months and the rest 142 (37%) were the only ones still on exclusive breast feeding despite the child being at eligible age for complementary feeding initiation. While trying to assess several reasons that led to early initiation of complementary feeding 304 (79.2%) did not respond, 6 (1.6%),4 (1.0%) 13 (3.4%) reported to have received advice from family members, friends and health care workers respectively, 3 (0.8%) said the baby seems to need more than just milk for them to be satisfied, 43 (11.2%) reported to have had no enough milk while the rest 11(2.9%) attributed the reasons to social –economic status and advice from the health care workers.

Conclusion: Our study revealed that early initiation of complementary foods can pose risks to child health and development. From this study it shows the big gap on when to actually initiate complementary feeding as more than half of mothers did not initiate complementary feeding to their child despite their child being at recommend age. Also, majority of children were only initiated and maintained with only carbohydrate contained foods which have low required contents for growth and development.

Recommendation: Therefore, there is a need to establish and strengthen multi sectorial collaboration to think over the possibilities of increasing appropriate complementary feeding practices. Finally, quality counseling of mothers and caregivers and appropriate behavior change communication to other family and community decision makers, and essential for improving infant and young child feeding practices with special emphasize given to poorly educated mothers with children from age 6- 9month and those households with big number of individuals.