Breast and complementary feeding in Ethiopia: new national evidence from systematic review and meta-analyses of studies in the past 10 years: reply

Excerpt

First of all, we would like to thank Moran and Puerto-Parejo for reading and the attention given to our article “Breast and complementary feeding in Ethiopia: new national evidence from systematic review and meta-analyses of studies in the past 10 years” [1]. Moran and Puerto-Parejo raised an important point regarding the retraction of Gultie and Sebsibie study “Determinants of suboptimal breastfeeding practice in Debre Berhan town, Ethiopia: a cross sectional study” [2, 3] and they indicated that a good and accurate literature review is a key element of systematic reviews and meta-analysis. Indeed, the issues raised are relevant on which we would like to comment. To optimize the accuracy of our literature review, we systematically searched articles indexed in six databases (i.e., PubMed, SCOPUS, EMBASE, CINHAL, Web of Science and WHO Global Health Library) using structured search strings and supplemented by manual searching of gray literature and cross-references. Our systematic review and meta-analysis were also conducted based on published protocol [4]. However, we unintentionally missed the retraction note on Gultie and Sebsibie study [3]. After excluding Gultie and Sebsibie study [2], there was no substantial change in the national prevalence of timely initiation of breastfeeding (66.1%; 95% CI 61.7–70.4) and exclusive breastfeeding (60.3%; 95% CI 55.6–64.9) (Table 1). In addition, as shown in Table 2, there was no evident change in the association between timely initiation of breastfeeding and health institution delivery (OR 1.60; 95% CI 1.05, 2.43) and vaginal delivery (OR 3.64; 95% CI 1.99, 6.64). However, the association between timely initiation of breastfeeding and breastfeeding counseling becomes borderline significant (OR 1.76; 1.00, 3.09). The association between exclusive breastfeeding and breastfeeding counseling (OR 2.34; 1.53, 3.59) and heath institution delivery (OR 2.46; 1.94, 3.11) was also not remarkably changed (Table 2). …