House hold dietary diversity and associated factors in Mirab Abaya wereda Southern Ethiopia 2016; community based cross sectional study

Background: Dietary diversity is essential for household welfare as well as for accomplishing other development activities. Households with insufficient access to food often face other challenges related to food insecurity including poor health and a decline in productivity which makes vicious cycle between under nutrition and decreased productivity. Objective: To assess house hold Dietary Diversity and associated factors in Mirab Abaya Wereda Southern Ethiopia, 2016. Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted from February to June, 2016. Out of 24 kebeles; nine kebeles were selected using simple random sampling method. The study house hold was selected using simple random sampling method by applying proportional to population size (PPS) for each selected kebele. Data was collected using pretested structured questionnaire adapted from FANTA and other related studies. Data was entered in to Epi info version 7 and exported to SPSS version 20.0 for analysis. Multivariate logistic regression model was fitted and odds ratios with 95% CI were calculated to identify factors associated with food insecurity. Result: A total of 453 households were interviewed and all were participated in the study making the response rate 100%. The overall mean age of head of the house hold was 41.9 years ± 14 (SD). Nearly Sixty percent of heads of the households were male. From 453 respondents nearly one third (34.3%) of the house holds had high dietary diversity while the rest had low dietary diversity. Sex of head of the house hold, marital status, monthly expenditure and presence of old age dependency were factors associated with dietary diversity. Being male sex for the house hold (AOR, 95% CI=3.55 (2.27, 5.58)) increases dietary diversity by nearly four times. Conclusion: In this study dietary diversity was 34.3%. Sex of head of the house hold, marital status, monthly expenditure and presence of old age dependency in the house hold were factors associated with dietary diversity.