Determinants of Exclusive Breast Feeding By HIV Positive Mothers in Mothers in Mulago National Referral Hospital

Abstract

The study sought to establish the determinants to exclusive breast feeding by HIV positive mothers. It was carried out among HIV positive mothers who are breastfeeding their infants of 0-6months in Mulago National Referral Hospital. The study adopted a cross sectional study design that employed both the quantitative and qualitative data collection approaches. A sample size of 81 respondents was used and these were selected using the purposive sampling technique. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0 from where Cross Tabulation Chi Square and Fisher’s exact test were done to examine the relationship of various determinants of compliance by HIV positive mothers to exclusive breastfeeding. The study findings indicated that the biggest number of study participants had breast fed their older children (70.4%), for more than 6 months (60.5%), were breast feeding the newly born child (77.3%) but only 36% complied with exclusive breast feeding among HIV positive mothers. Additionally, the study findings indicated that among the maternal factors affecting the compliance of HIV positive mothers to exclusive breast feeding, place of delivery (X2 -8.589 and P- 0.014), person influenced decision to stop breastfeeding (X2 -9.493 and P- 0.023), demonstration lesson how to breast feed (X2 -6.309 and P- 0.046) and type of problem experienced (X2 -4.238 and P- 0.039), were the only four factors significantly associated with exclusive breast feeding. Furthermore, the study findings also showed that none of the socio-cultural factors was found to be significant with exclusive breast feeding. Moreover, the study finding indicated that main sources of foods for the house hold (X2 -5.273 and P-0.046) was the only socio-economic factor that was significantly associated with exclusive breast feeding. More so, the findings of the study indicated that the number of times a mother attended prevention of mother to child transmission services (X2 -6.914 and P-0.016) was the only health facility factor significantly associated with exclusive breast feeding. The study findings imply that there is need to invent more all-embracing and broad approaches of providing exclusive breastfeeding education to HIV Positive Mothers. The Ministry of Heath may put in place interventions to promote exclusive breastfeeding such as provision of appropriate skills and information to help HIV-positive mothers gain control over exclusive breastfeeding.