Description:
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, 2020
Methodology: 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.