b) Quality of child care practices and child nutrition
In their study of childcare practices in Ghana, Nti and Lartey (2008:94) indicated that the quality of childcare practices is important for child nutrition. They assess the quality of childcare practices by considering household and personal hygiene practices, child immunization status, child dietary diversity and caregiver responsiveness. Nti and Lartey (2008:98) reported a significant correlation between good caregiver hygiene practices with child nutritional status and morbidity. Hygiene practices included child, mother and environmental cleanliness. They found that children with more active caregivers who were more likely to complete their children’s immunization schedules, encourage the child to eat and offer more food were more likely to have improved child nutritional status than less active caregivers. Therefore, Nti and Lartey (2008:93) indicate that more active caregiving such as feeding is positively associated to nutritional status thus quality of childcare practices is important for the improvement of child nutrition.
Other literature (WHO, 1999:117; WHO,
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(2004:947) investigate the association between maternal depression and infant nutritional status and illness. This was done by estimating the relative risk with 95% confidence interval (CI) of a child being stunted and underweight. They sample women from a rural community in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The assessment of maternal depression and disability is determined by using the Schedules Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN), a semi-structured interview. Rahaman et al. (2004:949-950) found that holding all confounding factors constant, women who were depressed increased the relative risk of stunting and underweight in their children. Furthermore, they found diarrheal occurrences were statistically significant and that children of depressed mothers were more at risk of diarrheal