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Infant feeding practice of HIV positive mothers and its determinants in public health institutions in central zone, Tigray Region, Northern Ethiopia.

Background: Vertical transmission is the major route of HIV transmission in infants. Thus, Infant feeding practice of HIV positive mothers needs to balance the risk of mother to child transmission through breast feeding with meeting the nutritional requirements and protection of infants against non-HIV morbidity and mortality. Objective: To assess infant feeding practice and its determinants among HIV positive mothers having infants enrolled in ART clinics of public institutions. Methods: Institution based cross sectional study was conducted in selected health facilities. Multi stage sampling technique was used to select the study population considering a design effect of 1.5. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 16.0. Multivariate logistic regression at 95% CI was used to indentify determinant variables. A p value < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Result: 209 HIV positive mothers were included in the study. Majority of the HIV positive mothers, 198 (90.40%) practiced Exclusive Breast Feeding. The rest, 13(5.9 %) and 8(3.7%) of mothers were practicing Mixed Feeding and Exclusive Replacement Feeding, respectively. In multivariate analysis residence, occupational status, Antenatal care and counseling were found to be independently associated (p-value < 0.05) with the recommended way of infant feeding practice (EBF and ERF) AOR = 11.06 (95% CI = 1.45-104.4), AOR = 0.07 (95%CI = 0.006-0.954), AOR = 17.12 (95%CI = 1.28-228.42) and AOR= 43.02(3.51-526.38) respectively. Conclusion: Majority of mothers followed the recommended way of infant feeding practice. Residence, ANC visits, counseling and occupational status of mothers were found to be major determinants.