IYCF and the Millennium Development Goals
Improving feeding practices for infants and children is the key to saving millions of lives, improving nutrition, and increasing economic opportunity in Bangladesh. For individuals, good nutrition is a prerequisite for a healthy and productive life; for our country, it is critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and securing long-term social and economic development.
| MDG | Contribution to Infant and Young Child Feeding |
|---|---|
| Goal 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger | Breastfeeding significantly reduces early childhood feeding costs (Bhatnagar et al., 1996). Breast milk is a low-cost and high quality food and provides sustainable food security for the child. Exclusive breastfeeding and continued breastfeeding for two years is associated with a reduction in underweight rates (Dewey, 1998) and is an excellent source of high quality calories for energy. |
| Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education | Breastfeeding and adequate complementary feeding are prerequisites for readiness to learn (Anderson,1990).The long chain fatty acids and micronutrients in breast milk and appropriate complementary foods support neurological development and enhance later school performance. |
| Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women | Breastfeeding is the great equalizer, giving every child a fair start to life. Most differences in growth between sexes begin as complementary foods are added to the diet, and gender preference begins to influence feeding decisions. Breastfeeding also empowers women; breastfeeding helps to space births and prevents maternal depletion; only women can provide it, enhancing their capacity to feed children; and it increases the focus on the need for adequate women’s nutrition. |
| Goal 4. Reduce child mortality | By reducing infectious disease incidence and severity, breastfeeding can reduce child mortality by about 13%, and improved complementary feeding can reduce child mortality by about 6% (Jones et al 2003). In addition, about 50%-60% of under-five mortality is caused by malnutrition due to poor breastfeeding practices and inadequate complementary foods and also to low birth weight (Pelletier & Frongillo,2003). The impact is increased in unhygienic settings. |
| Goal 5. Improve maternal health | The activities called for in the national strategy include increased attention to support for the mother’s nutritional and social needs. In addition, breastfeeding is associated with decreased maternal postpartum blood loss, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and endometrial cancer, as well as the probability of decreased bone loss post-menopause. Breastfeeding also increases the duration of birth intervals, reducing maternal risks of closely spaced pregnancies, including lessening risk of maternal nutritional depletion. Breastfeeding promotes return of the mother’s body to pre-pregnancy status, including more rapid involution of the uterus and postpartum weight loss (obesity prevention). |
| Goal 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases | Based on extrapolation from published literature and research pending publication on the impact of exclusive breastfeeding on parent-to-child transmission (PTCT) of HIV, exclusive breastfeeding in a population of untested breastfeeding HIV-infected population could be associated with a significant and measurable reduction in PTCT. |
| Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability | Breastfeeding is associated with decreased milk industry waste, plastics and aluminum tin waste, and decreased use of firewood/fossil fuels for alternative feeding preparation, less carbon dioxide emission as a result of fossil fuels, and less emissions from transport vehicles as breast milk needs no transportation. |
| Goal 8. Develop a global partnership for development | The national strategy fosters multi-sectoral collaboration, and can build upon the existing partnerships for support of development through breastfeeding and complementary feeding. |
