Nutritional Knowledge, WASH Practices of Mothers and Their Impact on the Nutritional Status of Children Aged 6–59 Months in Cumilla District, Bangladesh

Introduction: Child malnutrition is a pressing global public health issue, impacting both immediate health and future development. Adequate nutrition is a crucial aspect of public health, with maternal nutritional knowledge playing a vital role in ensuring optimal growth for children. Insufficient awareness about nutrition, even in households with sufficient resources, can result in poor outcomes for children.

Aim: This study aimed to explore the contemporary status of maternal nutritional knowledge, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices and their effect on the nutritional status of children aged 6–59 months in the Cumilla district of Bangladesh.

Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was carried out on 386 mother-child (6-59 months) pairs from 7 villages of the Cumilla district, Bangladesh. The study was designed to assess nutritional knowledge, WASH practices of mothers and nutritional status of their children using structured questionnaire and anthropometric measures. Chi square test was performed to investigate the association between maternal nutritional knowledge, WASH practices, and the nutritional status of children.

Results: The study revealed, the level of nutritional knowledge was average (72.3%) among mothers. The prevalence of stunting, underweight, wasting and overweight were 38.6%, 16.9%, 11.9%, and 7.8% respectively. A strong relationship was found between nutritional knowledge, WASH practices of mothers and child’s stunting (p<0.05) respectively. Maternal nutritional knowledge also had a strong association with underweight where female child was more prone to underweight than its male counterpart (p<0.05). There was no significant association between maternal nutritional knowledge, WASH practices and wasting (p = 0.224, p = 0.328) respectively.

Conclusion: The study revealed elevated rates of stunting and overweight in children compared to the national average, while underweight prevalence was lower and wasting prevalence was similar. Therefore, it is crucial to tackle social and cultural issues and implement effective strategies to enhance maternal nutritional knowledge and WASH practices to mitigate malnutrition in the rural areas of Bangladesh.