Abstract:
Background: Poor dietary practice is common in developing countries, often resulting in
permanent impairment, pregnancy complications and poor obstetric outcomes. The magnitude of
poor dietary practice during pregnancy and its associated factors remains unknown in pastoralist
community of Ethiopia, particularly in Ethiopian Somali Region, to put direction of prevention
and interventions that will benefit populations of pregnant women and their babies.
Objectives: To assess dietary practice and associated factors among pregnant women aged 15-49
years in pastoralist community of Moyale District, Somali region, Ethiopia.
Methods: Community based cross sectional study was conducted on 729 pregnant women in
pastoralist community of Moyale district of Ethiopian Somali Region. Data were collected using
a structured pre-tested questionnaire from pregnant women in household level. The data were
checked, cleaned and entered into EpiData software version 4.1 and analyzed using SPSS
version 20. The descriptive analysis such as frequency and percentages distribution, measures of
central tendency and measure of dispersion were used. Bivariate logistic regressions were used to
select candidate variables and multivariable logistic regression was done to identify independent
predictors of poor dietary practices of pregnant women. Model fitness was checked by using
Hosmer and Lemeshow goodness of fit test with degree of freedom 8 and significance level of pvalue 0.11. Adjusted odds ratio with its 95% confidence interval was used to measure strength of
association and statistical significance respectively.
Result: From sampled pregnant mothers, 56.2% had poor dietary practice. Having relatively
high family size (AOR=3.213, 95% CI: 1.803-5.723), having less family income (AOR=3.270,
95% CI: 1.927-5.547), living in food in-secured household (AOR=2.169, 95% CI: 1.236-3.804),
not having nutrition information (AOR=7.246, 95% CI: 4.917-10.678), were found to be
independently associated with poor dietary practice.
Conclusion: High proportion of pregnant women had poor dietary practice in this study.
Pregnant mothers having relatively high family size, less family income, living in food insecured households, not having nutrition information needs special attention in order to make
them have good nutritional practice
