Determinants of inappropriate complementary feeding practices in infant and young children in Bangladesh: secondary data analysis of Demographic Health Survey 2007

Suboptimal and inappropriate complementary feeding practices are one of the major causes of child undernutrition in the first 2 years of life in South Asian countries including Bangladesh. The aim of this study was to use the newly developed World Health Organization infant feeding indicators to identify the potential risk factors associated with inappropriate complementary feeding practices. We used data for 1728 children aged 6-23 months obtained from nationally representative data from the 2007 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey to assess the association between complementary feeding and other characteristics using multivariate models. Only 71% of infants were consuming soft, semi-solid and solid food by 6-8 months of age. In the multivariate analysis, mothers who had no education had a higher…