by Playfuls Staff |
27th April 2006
Breastfeeding should be standard practise to encourage proper growth in infants around the world, the World Health Organization said Thursday in announcing a new "child growth standards" programme. [more]
WHO said the new universal standards, resulting from a study of child development carried out since 1997, were aimed at harmonizing national and international guidelines and included the breastfeeding of children as one of those standards to encourage proper child growth and development.
Some 8,000 children from Brazil, Ghana, India, Norway, Oman and the United States were involved in the study, selected and evaluated on the basis of previous criteria for proper growth that included breast feeding, as well as good healthcare and non-smoking mothers.
"This brings coherence for the first time between the tools used to assess growth, and national and international infant feeding guidelines which recommended breast feeding as the optimal source of nutrition during infancy," WHO said.
"This will allow accurate assessment, measurement and evaluation of breast feeding and complementary feeding," it said.
WHO said differences in child growth after age 5 are more influenced by early nutrition feeding practices, environment, and healthcare than by genetics or ethnicity.
While WHO acknowledged that children around the world have individual differences, the study found that average growth is "remarkably similar" if the universal standards are applied.
© 2006 DPA
