Inadequate Feeding Practices Persist in Burkina Faso

Abstract

In Burkina Faso, undernutrition remains a public health issue. The food quality of under 2-year-old children constitutes a key pillar of child nutritional status. The objective of this study is to assess the adequacy of child feeding practices in Burkina based on the norms framed jointly by WHO/Unicef in 2011. The dataset used has been issued from the nutritional cross-sectional nation-wide survey conducted from November to December, 2015. It is the sub-sample of under two-year-old children (8 202) who were targeted by this essentially descriptive analysis. Hardly half of the children were early initiated to breast-feeding. Only half was exclusively breast-fed during their first 6 months of life. The low diversity of complementary feeding affected more than seven children out of ten. The priority was put on high dense energy food at the expense of those of high biological value ones. Except the continuation of breast-feeding at two years old, all the other aspects of the child feeding practices deserve reinforcement. The improvement interventions should target early initiation of breastfeeding, feeding diversification based on qualitative foods and preventive support of long-term interventions.