Low levels of breastfeeding put children at risk
Innovations Report
July 1, 2004
"Children in developing countries are being put at unnecessary risk of disease and death as they are fed alternatives to breast milk. According to a study published in BMC Medicine today, the amount of breastfeeding taking place falls a long way short of recommended levels. In 2001 the World Health Organization (WHO) passed a resolution recommending that infants under six months of age were fed exclusively on breast milk, in part to protect them from malnutrition, pneumonia and waterborne diseases. Yet only two in five infants this age from developing countries are fed only on breast milk, and more than five percent of them are not breastfed at all...."