Promoting breastfeeding by peer counselling in Bangladesh
Peer counselling is highly effective in promoting exclusive breastfeeding in less-developed countries, and should be incorporated in mother and child health programmes, concludes research published in this week’s issue of THE LANCET. Most mothers breastfeed in Bangladesh, but they rarely practise exclusive breastfeeding. Hospital-based strategies for breastfeeding promotion cannot reach them because about 95% have home deliveries. Rukhsana Haider and colleagues from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, postulated that with the intervention of trained peer counsellors, mothers could be enabled to breastfeed exclusively for the recommended duration of 5 months. 40 adj