Do breastfeeding practices correlate with childhood diarrhoea? Multiple data analyses using national surveys in Ghana

Abstract BACKGROUND Breastfeeding as a natural intervention tends to have a protective effect on the occurrence of diarrhoea in children. In environments where breastfeeding is suboptimal coupled with the early introduction of complementary foods, children are at a higher risk of experiencing diarrhoea. This study examined whether breastfeeding practices are associated with childhood diarrhoea in Ghana using multiple secondary datasets. METHODS The study used data from GDHS 2003, 2008 and 2014 individual datasets. These datasets contain data on women and issues related to children who were two years of age (0-23 months). An appended weighted sample of 4,675 mother-child pairs was used for the analyses. Thus, logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the effect of explanatory variables that were considered as potential confounders on the association between breastfeeding practices and childhood diarrhoea. RESULTS Univariate analysis revealed that children who were not exclusively breastfeeding had higher odds of experiencing diarrhoea. With the multilevel logistic analysis, breastfeeding practices and risks of diarrhoea among children revealed significant associations. CONCLUSIONS Findings for this study further affirms to the protective effect breastfeeding has against childhood diarrhoea in relation to the Ghanaian context. Exclusive breastfeeding and at times predominant breastfeeding could prevent or minimize diarrhoea compare to non-practice of breastfeeding or partial breastfeeding.