Breastfeeding and common childhood diseases in Zambia: does breastfeeding have a protective effect against diarrhea, fever and acute respiratory infections among children in Zambia?
Maternal and child health
33
Issue: 1
(02 - 2019)
Background: This paper aimed at answering two specific questions: does breastfeeding reduce the
occurrence of ARIs, Fever and Diarrhea in children who are breastfeeding; and is the occurrence of
these common childhood diseases affected by duration (period) of breastfeeding?
Data source and Method: Secondary analysis of the 2013 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS)
was applied by using the children recode dataset (ZMKR6 I FL). Analysis was done at three levels:
Descriptive, bivariate and multivariate (Binary and Multinomial Logistics regressions).
Results: Results in this paper show that breastfeeding does not protect children against Diarrhea
(OR I .3; I . I - I .4) but does so against Fever and ARIs (OR 0.9; 0.8- I .0). Children whose
mothers were employed were more likely to suffer from all the three disease outcomes compared to
those not employed (OR Diarrhea I .2; Fever I .5; ARIs I .2).
Conclusion: Diarrhea seems to be more pronounced in children who are breastfeeding than those not
breastfeeding, especially those breastfed beyond 6 months.
Keywords: ARIs, Breastfeeding, Children, Diarrhea, Fever, Zambia
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