Strengthening action to improve feeding of infants and young children 6-23 months of age in nutrition and child health programmes

Overview

Appropriate breastfeeding and complementary feeding are among the most effective interventions to promote child health, growth and development. In the past decades, the evidence for essential actions to promote exclusive breastfeeding has been strengthened considerably. More recently, progress has been made in defining standards for complementary feeding. However, the process of translating these standards into specific policies and programmatic actions is less well developed.

WHO and UNICEF organized an informal meeting to fill this gap. This report summarizes the proceedings of the meeting and provides operational guidance for policy-makers and programme managers on how to improve complementary feeding, in the context of the implementation of the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding.