Magnitude and Reasons for Harmful Traditional Practices among Children Less Than 5 Years of Age in Axum Town, North Ethiopia, 2013

Background. In addition to beneficial traditional practices, there are around 140 harmful traditional practices affecting mothers and children in almost all ethnic groups of Ethiopia. Therefore this study might give a clue about their practice and associated factors. The objective of this study was to assess magnitude of harmful traditional practices among children less than 5 years of age in Axum Town, North Ethiopia. Methods. Community based cross-sectional study was conducted on 752 participants who were selected using multistage sampling. Simple random sampling method was used to select ketenas from all kebelles of Axum Town. After proportional allocation of sample size to eachketena, systematic random sampling method was used to get the study participants. Data was collected using interviewer administered questionnaire; it was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 16 and descriptive statistics was calculated. Results. Majority of the respondents (81.2%) were Orthodox, 78.2% of the mothers had no work, and majority of mothers had no formal education. Among the harmful traditional practices performed on children, uvula cutting alone was performed on 72.8% of children followed by milk teeth extraction and uvula cutting with eyebrow incision. Conclusion. The leading harmful traditional practice performed on children in this study was uvula cutting.