Feeding practices of infants and young children according to whom indicators at Children Hospital,Islamabad

Background: children require adequate amounts of essential nutrition for their growth and development. who has designed well set guidelines to assess feeding practices of infants i.e.,(guidelines for assessing infant and young child feeding,iycf). the core points of these guidelines are early initiation of breastfeeding,exclusive breastfeeding under 6 months of age,continuous breastfeeding till 1 year of age,introduction of soft foods,semi-solid and solid foods to children with minimum dietary diversity,meal frequency,acceptable diet and use of iron rich foods. aim: to determine feeding practices of children between 6-24 months of age as per who iycf practice guidelines. place and duration of a study: study was carried out at pakistan institute of medical sciences (pims),islamabad,children hospital,lactation management clinic from 20/03/2012 to 20/09/2012. methods: 305 mother-baby pairs were included. . baseline information of the child and mother,information regarding who iycf practices was entered in the proforma. the outcome of our study was assessed via a scoring system with reference to current iycf practices of mothers. results: the mean score for iycf practices was 3.58±1.39. iycf practice scores were poor,good and ideal in 152(49.8%),143(46.9%) and 10(3.3%) respectively. the mean iycf practices score was not significantly different between rural-urban residence or the professional status; p= >0.05. iycf practices were better among more educated and good income families. conclusion: there is insufficient knowledge of breastfeeding and complementary feeding regarding infants and young children's in mothers contributing factors include education of mother and socio-economic factors.