Community IYCF Support improves exclusive breastfeeding rate among rural women of Zimbabwe Charity Zvandaziva Nutrition Specialist UNICEF Zimbabwe International SBCC Summit 2016 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 8-10 February 2016

Introduction

In Zimbabwe young children receive other foods too early Community-based counselling adopted to improve IYCF practices. Ministry of Health trained 2804 community workers (CWs) Background Trained CWs were each tasked to follow up 10 mother baby pairs providing individual IYCF counselling facilitating IYCF support group and group meetings

Methodology Lot quality assessment sampling (LQAS) was used to assess IYCF practices using 24hour recall District subdivided into 7 smaller catchment areas called Supervision Areas (SA) At least 19 mothers with children in each age category; 0-5 months and 6-24 months were interviewed from each SA Data was entered and analysed in Epi Info version 2000.

Results

IndicatorFrequencyRateConfidence Interval Early Initiation of BF (n=337) %64.5%-74.6% Exclusive Breastfeeding (n=180) %57.9%-72.3% Min. Acceptable Diet (n=131) %24.2%-40.8% Received individual Counselling (n=225) %14.6%-25.3% Participated in IYCF Support group (n=226) 198.4%5.1%-12.8%

Results Bikita mothers who received individual IYCF counselling and/or participated in IYCF support group were more than 6 times likely to exclusively breastfeed {OR 6.8, p<0.01}.

Conclusions C-IYCF support associated with increased exclusive breastfeeding practice Community IYCF support could have contributed to change in IYCF social norms in implementing districts. Findings supported advocacy for scale up Other government ministries engaged to increase delivery platforms of community IYCF counselling. Funding secured to scale up community IYCF counselling

Discussion The Community IYCF counselling package model has been adapted to deliver other nutrition sensitive actions including WASH Funding has been secured to scale up to 50% of the districts Latest revision of the package was very helpful in starting micronutrient supplementation programme using micronutrient powders

Thank you! Special thanks to the communities of Bikita and Insiza and Ministry of Health colleagues; District Nutritionist for Bikita, and Provincial Nutritionists for Masvingo and Matebeleland South For more info, contact: Charity Zvandaziva, Nutrition Specialist, UNICEF Zimbabwe