Infant feeding practices of mothers is an important determinant of children’s nutritional status. In Ghana, breast-feeding is near universal although exclusive breast-feeding to 6 months is still low. About 38% of infants under 4 months are exclusively breast-fed whilst most Ghanaian mothers start introducing other liquids and foods by 3 months of life. The main complementary food for infants is a fermented maize dough porridge called koko.

A cross-sectional study was conducted between February and June 2002 at selected health centers at Okwenya, Kpong and Agomanya all in the Eastern region.

Two hundred mothers with children between the ages of 6-24 months were randomly selected and measures of socio-economic background, breastfeeding, child weaning practices and immunization status of the children were taken. Some of the results showed that:

1. Most of the mothers (89%) attended antenatal clinics even though the number that delivered at hospitals was 51%.
2. Foods fed on the first day after birth depended on place of birth:
   • Babies who were born at home were more likely to be fed water, glucose, solution sugar solution, coconut water, honey or nothing.
   • Babies who were born at a hospital or health centre were more likely to be fed breast milk (62.9%) or infant formula (66.7%).
3. Initiation of breastfeeding was usually within first 2 hours of birth. Feeding of colostrum within the first 5 days of delivery was found to be high (beyond 90%).
4. More than 60 percent of the population initiated feeding of complementary foods in the 6th month. The first food item given was usually Koko, a maize porridge.
5. Most infants in the study had been vaccinated with BCG, Polio (1, 2, 3) and DPT. Measles vaccination rate was however below 50%. For children 12-24 months old, only Polio 4 immunization rate was low (~40%)

The study raised the need to investigate reasons why mothers do not deliver in hospitals and to find ways to motivate/encourage them to deliver at government health facilities and to complete the vaccination schedules of their children in late infancy.

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