DIETARY DIVERSITY AND ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG PREGNANT WOMEN ATTENDING ANC IN HARAR TOWN PUBLIC HEALTH FACILITIES, EASTERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Background: Appropriate and adequate maternal nutrition is the basic and most essential for survival, development and health of pregnant women especially during the most 1000 critical days. Low dietary diversity is the most important public health issue in developing countries due to monotomous feeding habit.This results in poor nutritional status especialy micronutrient defiencies among women of reproductive age group in particular among pregnant women. However, there is limited data concerning the relative magnitude of dietary diversity and assocted facors among pregnant women in Ethiopia. Objective: To assess the magnitude dietary diversity and associated factors among pregnant women attending ANC in Harar town public health facilities, Eastern Ethiopia. Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted among 471 selected pregnant women attending ANC in Harar town from January 25 -March 25, 2018. Selected pregnant women by using systematic random sampling. A pretested and structured questionnaire was used to collect dietary diversity related data. Data were entered on to EpiData 3.1version and exported statistical package for social science version 20. Binary logistic regression was performed to assess the association between each independent variable and dependent variable. Odd Ratios along with 95% Confidence intervals were estimated to identify factors associated with the outcome variable using multivariable logistic regression. The level of statistical significance was declared at pvalue ≤0.05. Result: The magnitude of dietary diversity among pregnant women was 52.7%, 95% CI: (47.9%, 57.6%). Urban residence [(AOR=0.08, 95% CI: (0.02, 0.33)], family size less than 3 [(AOR=7.28, 95% CI: (3.25, 16.28)], business related husband occupation [(AOR=2.55, 95% CI: (1.39, 4.6)], women supported by their husband [(AOR=3.85; 95% CI: (1.23, 12.02)], having more than one dwelling room [AOR=5.7, 95% CI: (2.32, 13.8)], women from food secure households [(AOR= 0.37, 95% CI: (0.17, 0.77)] and women from rich [AOR=2.12, 95% CI: (1.18, 3.81)] and medium wealth quantile [AOR=1.93, 95% CI: (1.13 .39)] were siginificantly associated with dietary diversity of pregnant women. Conclusion: The magnitude of dietary diversity is high among pregnant women. Urban residence of women, husband occupation, small family size, having increased numbers of dewelling room, husband support, household food insecurity and medium and rich with household wealth quantile family wealth indices were significant predictors of pregnant women dietary diversty. Thus, efforts shoud be made to increase family wealth quantile, male involvement at home and home gardening to increase the miconutent adequacy of pregnant women dietary diversity.