Overview

This guideline provides global, evidence-informed recommendations on protection, promotion and support of optimal breastfeeding in facilities providing maternity and newborn services, as a public health intervention. It is intended to contribute to discussions among stakeholders when selecting or prioritizing appropriate actions in their efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the global targets for 2025 as put forward in the Comprehensive implementation plan on maternal, infant and young child nutrition, endorsed by the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly in 2012, in resolution WHA65.6, the Global strategy for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health (2016–2030), and the Global Strategy for infant and young child feeding.

The document presents the key recommendations, a summary of the supporting evidence and a description of the considerations that contributed to the deliberations and consensus decision-making.

Contents

• Publication history
• Acknowledgements
• Executive summary
• Introduction
  • Objectives
  • Scope
  • Target audience
  • Population of interest
  • Priority questions
  • Outcomes of interest
  • Presentation of the recommendations
  • Description of the interventions
• Evidence and recommendations
  • Summary of considerations common to all recommendations
  • Immediate support to initiate and establish breastfeeding
  • Feeding practices and additional needs of infants
  • Creating an enabling environment
• Implementation of the guideline
  • Implementation considerations
  • Regulatory considerations
  • Ethical and equity considerations
  • Monitoring and evaluation of guideline implementation
• Research gaps
• Guideline development process
  • WHO steering group
  • Guideline development group
  • External resource persons
  • Systematic review teams
  • Management of conflicts of interests
  • Identification of priority questions and outcomes
  • Evidence identification and retrieval
  • Quality assessment and grading of evidence
  • Formulation of recommendations
  • Consensus decision-making rules and procedures
  • Document preparation and peer-review
• Dissemination and plans for updating
  • Dissemination
  • Plans for updating the guideline
• References
• Annex 1. Question in population, intervention, comparator, outcomes (PICO) format
• Annex 2. Systematic review details
• Annex 3. GRADE summary of findings tables
• Annex 4. GRADE-CERQual summary of qualitative findings tables on values and preferences of mothers
• Annex 5. GRADE-CERQual summary of qualitative findings tables on acceptability among health workers and stakeholders
• Annex 6. WHO steering group
• Annex 7. WHO guideline development group
• Annex 8. External resource persons
• Annex 9. Systematic reviews and authors
• Annex 10. Peer-reviewers
• Annex 11. WHO Secretariat

This publication is a World Health Organization (WHO) guideline. A WHO guideline is any document, whatever its title, containing WHO recommendations about health interventions, whether they be clinical, public health or policy interventions. A standard guideline is produced in response to a request for guidance in relation to a change in practice, or controversy in a single clinical or policy area, and is not expected to cover the full scope of the condition or public health problem. A recommendation provides information about what policymakers, health-care providers or patients should do. It implies a choice between different interventions that have an impact on health and that have ramifications for the use of resources. All publications containing WHO recommendations are approved by the WHO Guidelines Review Committee.

Suggested citation:

Guideline: protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding in facilities providing maternity and newborn services. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2017. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

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