Minimum Acceptable Diet Practice and its Associated Factors among Children’s Aged 6–23 Months in Rural Communities of Goncha District, North West Ethiopia, 2020

Abstract Introduction: After the first 6 months breast milk is no longer sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the infant. Therefore, complementary foods should be added to the child’s diet. Feeding children’s with diversified diet is practiced improperly in developing countries including Ethiopia particularly in the rural community. Interventions are intended to undertake the nutrition problems in children in the country. However, the progress was not satisfactory, particularly; minimum acceptable diet has increased from 3% to 7% in a decade (2005-2016). Objective: To determine the proportion of minimum acceptable diet practice and its associated factors among children’s aged 6-23 months in rural communities of Goncha district, 2020Methodology: Community based cross-sectional study was employed at rural communities of Goncha district from June 15 to July 15 2020. Multi stage sampling technique was used to select study subjects, and interview administered structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Data was entered by Epi Data version 4.0.2 and exported to SPSS 20 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to see the association between minimum acceptable diet and independent variable. Then, P-value <0.05 with 95% CI on multivariable logistic regression analysis were used to identify the independent predictor of outcome variable Result: A total of 430 mothers who have children aged 6-23 months were included in the analysis with 98% of response rate. About 12.6% of children’s aged 6-23 months received the recommended minimum acceptable diet. Children whose mothers who had formal education [AOR= 2.7, 95%CI (1.133, 6.231)], institutional delivery [AOR= 4.5, 95%CI (1.986, 10.362)], media exposure [AOR=2.6, 95%CI (1.303, 5.291)] and higher household wealth index [AOR= 2.5, 95%CI (1.139, 5.90)] were significantly associated with minimum acceptable diet.Conclusion: The practice of minimum acceptable diet in the study area was inadequate and very low according to notional and world health organization’s recommendation. So, strengthening institutional delivery, improving the wealth of the community and exposure to media, and finally empowering women’s for education are recommended.