World breastfeeding week 1 - 7 August 2005

Links

WABA website

Source Key list on nutrition and child health

Breastfeeding can save 1.3 million infant lives a year.

Giving babies only breastmilk until they are six months old and then introducing other foods while continuing to breastfeed will have the biggest impact on infant mortality, reducing it by 20 per cent.

This is the conclusion of UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), supported by evidence from the Lancet's Child Survival series. And it's a message that is being communicated during the fourteenth world breastfeeding week organised by the World Alliance on Breastfeeding Action (WABA).

WABA is mobilising its network to engage communities and international and national health programmes with practical information and ideas for action to improve infant feeding practices.

The detail of what family foods can be prepared and used to complement breastmilk for babies over six-months old can be worked out locally. WABA recommends adapting complementary feeding guidelines through consultative research with mothers and caregivers.

»World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) Global Forum

»Source Key list on nutrition and child health

WABA is a global network of more than 500 organisations in 81 countries that aims to protect, promote and support breastfeeding as a right of all children and mothers www.waba.org.my