Infant and young child feeding

An infant that is not exclusively breastfed could be at a substantially greater risk of death from diarrhoea or pneumonia than one who is. Moreover, breastfeeding supports infants’ immune systems and may protect them later in life from chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes. In addition, breastfeeding protects mothers against certain types of cancer and other health conditions. Adequate feeding from 6 months onwards can prevent undernutrition and decrease the risk of infectious diseases, such as diarrhoea and pneumonia. Yet despite all the potential benefits, only about two fifths of infants 0-5 months of age worldwide are exclusively breastfed, and slightly more than two thirds are introduced to solid foods in a timely manner.

Levels of recommended feeding practices

Analysis of data on feeding practices among infants and young children highlights the need for accelerated programming in this area. Globally, less than one in two newborns are put to the breast within the first hour of birth, and only over two in five infants less than 6 months of age are exclusively breastfed. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that breastfeeding continues until age 2 and beyond, yet less than two in three young children aged 12–23 months are benefitting from it.

Global estimates for feeding of children aged 6 months to 2 years indicate substantial room for improvement. A little more than two thirds of six– to eight-month-olds are receiving any solid food at all, and when considering measures of diet quantity and quality, the rates are much lower: only one in two receive a minimum meal frequency and less than one in three a minimum diet diversity.

Levels of recommended feeding practices vary widely among regions. While more than two in three newborns in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are put to the breast within one hour of birth, only one in three newborns in Middle East and North Africa receive benefits of early initiation of breastfeeding. Similarly, in case of continued breastfeeding, more than three in four children 12-23 months of age in South Asia are still breastfed compared to less than one in two children in Latin America & the Caribbean. This observed pattern is however, reversed in case of indicators assessing diets of infants and young children like minimum dietary diversity. Compared to three in five children 6–23 months of age in Latin America & the Caribbean, only one in five children in South Asia receive foods from the minimum number of food groups.

Part one: Focus on breastfeeding

Many regions have made some progress to improve exclusive breastfeeding among infants 0–5 months of age over the past 15 years. At the global level, the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding has improved modestly, seeing an increase of only 7 percentage points. In four out of seven regions, the percentage of infants exclusively breastfed has increased by ten percentage points or more.

While this progress is encouraging, there is a need to further boost the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding as globally three in five infants 0–5 months of age are still not receiving the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding. Two regions; East Asia and Pacific and Middle East and North Africa with trend data have current prevalence at around 30 per cent, and both regions have improved very little, if at all, in more than a decade. The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding in Latin America and the Caribbean has remained unchanged since 2005.

Part two: Focus on complementary feeding practices

As infants grow, their nutrient needs grow with them. After the first 6 months of life, an infant’s nutrient demands start to exceed what breastmilk alone can provide. To keep up with these growing demands, WHO recommends that infants begin eating solid, semi-solid or soft foods at 6 months of age to ensure that their nutrient intake is sufficient to fuel their developing brains and bodies and thus indicators related to consumption of solid, semi-solid and soft foods become increasingly important to track.

While it is recommended that infants start eating solid foods at 6 months, globally, about one third of infants 6–8 months old are not yet eating solid foods, posing a threat to their growth and development. The situation is most troubling in South Asia, where about half of infants are being introduced to solid foods too late.

Introduction to solid, semi-solid or soft foods (%), by country, 2018

While infants and children are the youngest members of their families – proportionally, their nutrient needs are the greatest. In fact, the nutritional needs for growth and development in children 6–23 months of age are greater per kilogram of body weight than at any other time in life. Frequent feeding of a variety of foods is therefore important to help ensure nutrient needs are met. In the graphic below, we summarize data about minimum meal frequency, minimum diet diversity and minimum acceptable diet among children 6–23 months of age (see notes on the data section for further details on these indicators) among a subset of 74 low- and middle-income countries with comparable data for each of the three indicators. Only half of all children aged 6–23 months are being fed even a minimum meal frequency and only one third are fed a minimally diverse diet comprising at least five out of eight food groups in the previous day. Together, when considering both minimum meal frequency and minimum diet diversity, less than one in five children are receiving a “minimally acceptable diet”. When considering which segments of society are affected most, disparity between richest and poorest is stark, especially for minimum diet diversity. In any case, even the richest are not doing very well when it comes to diet diversity indicating efforts are needed to improve diets of infants and young children among all segments of society.