Background: Adequate infant feeding enhances growth, overall health and survival of
infants in the early years of life and throughout the life cycle. Furthermore, maternal health
care services offer mothers education on infant feeding and care. As Ghana seeks to
achieve optimal universal health and survival for all mothers and children through targeted
policy making, this study makes significant contributions to the current literature on
maternal health care utilization and infant feeding that can help to identify vulnerable
groups that require immediate attention. The aim of this study is to determine the
association between components of maternal health care utilization and infant feeding
practices such as: breastfeeding initiation, prelacteal feeding and continued breastfeeding.
Methods: Data from the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) carried out
as the fifth round in a series of national level population and health surveys was used. The
survey covers information on maternal health, family planning, fertility, child health and
nutrition. This present study focused on women (N= 2099) of the reproductive age group
15 to 49 with live births within five years preceding the study. Timing of first antenatal care
visit, number of antenatal care visits, place of delivery and mode of delivery were used as
the components of maternal health care utilization. Breastfeeding initiation, prelacteal
feeding and continued breastfeeding beyond six months were the infant feeding practices
evaluated in this study. Logistic regression analyses was used to calculate the odds ratios
(OR) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for infant feeding practices.
Results: In total, 52.5% of women initiated breastfeeding within an hour after birth. Only
few women (18.1%) offered prelacteal foods to their infants within three days after birth
and 78% of women continued breastfeeding beyond six months. Having a cesarean delivery
and a non-institutional delivery was significantly associated with a lesser likelihood of
initiating breastfeeding within 1 hour after delivery (OR for Cesarean delivery 0.11, 95%
CI 0.12-0.27, OR for non-institutional delivery 0.78, 95% CI 0.62-0.99) and a higher
likelihood of prelacteal feeding (OR for Cesarean delivery 1.92, 95% CI 1.19-3.09, OR for
non-institutional delivery 1.98, 95% CI 1.42-2.76) in the first three days after delivery. Late
antenatal care (after the first trimester) was found to be associated with lower odds of
breastfeeding beyond six months (OR 0.77, 95% CI 0.59-0.99). Women belonging to the
African traditional religion and the poor wealth quintile were less likely to initiate
breastfeeding within an hour after birth and many unmarried women had a higher
probability of prelacteal feeding. Moreover, women of the age groups of 25 to 49 years
showed significant associations with continued breastfeeding beyond six months.
Conclusion: This study showed that infant feeding practices were partly determined by
maternal health care utilization during pregnancy. Therefore, components of maternal
health care utilization should be addressed when scaling-up infant feeding in Ghana.