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THE AWARENESS AND ATTITUDE OF MOTHERS TOWARDS THE BENEFITS OF BREASTFEEDING IN FIRST 6 MONTHS ON THEM AND THEIR BABIES IN MAKKAH REGION, SAUDI ARABIA, 2019

Najia al hojaili,Omamah Sami Alsabbah, Njood Mohammed Siddiq Albangali, badryh saad albalwi , Hassan Mohammad Alahmad, Nasser Abdulaziz Alharthi and Ashwaq mousa hommadi, Abeer Shaker Elmoursy Ali

According to the World Health Organization report, 2009 recorded low ‘exclusive breastfeeding’ rates in developing countries in comparison to the developed ones. In Saudi Arabia, there is, unfortunately, insufficient data available on breastfeeding. Previous studies have shown that the impact of social media and health awareness on mothers in breastfeeding their children. The present study aimed; i.To estimate prevalence breastfeeding in 1st six months ii.To compare awareness about breastfeeding benefits with other regions in kingdom iii.To assess the prevalence of the practice in breastfeeding and its duration Methods: A randomized cross-sectional study was conducted among adult Saudi adults. The data were gathered using a specifically designed self-administered electronic questionnaire translated to Arabic with close-ended multiple-choice questions to assess awareness and attitude of mothers towards the benefits of breastfeeding in 1st six months on them and their babies Results: While breastfeeding usually exclusively involves a woman and a child, the present sample also collected opinions from men bout breastfeeding in the first 6 months. 163 out of 561 (29.1%) of the respondents were male, while the rest were females. At 5% level of significance, there was no association between the age group of respondents reported and the attitude towards breastfeeding p=.062, which was also the case with the father’s highest level of education p=.114. Conclusion:The population of Makkah appears to embrace breastfeeding across ages, education level gender and family size. However, most parents use both industrial milk and breastfeeding methods to feed their infants in the first six months