LEADING ARTICLE

Infant nutrition

Breast feeding

A Nicoll¹, A Williams²

¹ Director, of CDSC, PHLS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, 61 Colindale Avenue, London NW9 5EQ, UK
² Senior Lecturer and Consultant in Neonatal Paediatrics, Department of Child Health, St George's Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 0RE, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr A Nicoll, PHLS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, 61 Colindale Avenue, London NW9 5EQ, UK;
anicoll@phls.org.uk

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An effective but under applied intervention in Europe

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Keywords: breast feeding; infant; nutrition

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Over 95% of the world's children are initially breast fed and as the result of promotion programmes, prevalence has increased throughout the 1990s in many developing countries.¹ Although breast feeding could improve the health of mothers and children in all parts of the world, ironically its potential has still to be realised in many of the world's wealthiest countries where prevalence remains low. United Kingdom data collected during the last quinquennial national survey of infant feeding (September 2000) have recently been released.² They show only a minimal increase in England and Wales (70% of babies were breast fed at birth, as opposed to 68% in 1995), largely explicable by the confounding effects of increased maternal age and educational attainment.² Significant increases were, however, seen in Scotland and Northern Ireland, traditionally areas of low breast feeding uptake, where there have been vigorous promotional campaigns.^2,3 The UK picture is typical . . . [Full text of this article]

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• Harris, R J (2004). Nutrition in the 21st century: what is going wrong. Arch. Dis. Child. 89: 154-158 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• MacDonald, A (2003). Is breast best? Is early solid feeding harmful?. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health 123: 169-174 [Abstract]  
• Foote, K D, Marriott, L D (2003). Weaning of infants. Arch. Dis. Child. 88: 488-492 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Conti Nibali, S (2003). Cultural representation of newborn feeding. Arch. Dis. Child. 88: 555-555 [Full Text]  
• Davies, E G, Sharland, M, Nicoll, A (2003). Health protection and a new strategy for combating infection in children. Arch. Dis. Child. 88: 1-3 [Full Text]  

eLetters:

Read all eLetters

Imroving breast feeding prevalence needs joined up government

Elspeth Webb

ADC Online, 29 Jul 2002 [Full text]

Monitoring breastfeeding rates is a priority

Helen E Bedford

ADC Online, 12 Aug 2002 [Full text]

Cultural representation of newborn feeding

Sergio Conti Nibali

ADC Online, 10 Sep 2002 [Full text]