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Sweden leads, US lags

Baby-friendly hospitals - Sweden leads the way.

In 1990, 31 governments met with UNICEF and WHO at the Innocenti Centre in Florence to draft the Innocenti Declaration on the promotion, protection and support of breastfeeding. The Declaration set out operational targets for all countries to achieve by 1995.

This is 1995. No government has yet reached all the targets, and most of the Declaration's signatories are still some way from reaching the goals.

The United States, which also co-sponsored the original Innocenti meeting, is showing no progress in any of the four areas: it has no national breastfeeding committee, no baby-friendly hospitals, no regulations on the marketing of breastmilk substitutes, and no right to paid maternity leave and breastfeeding breaks at work.

In the industrialized world, Sweden leads the way. Of the country's 66 maternity units, 50 are already declared baby-friendly. The chart below shows progress - or the lack of it - being made by the 31 countries that drew up the Declaration. All except Mauritius, the US, and Zaire have national breastfeeding committees.

The Innocenti

The chart shows not whether targets are achieved but whether some progress is being made.

                            Some    At least
              Baby-   breastmilk     minimum
           friendly   substitute   maternity
          hospitals    marketing    benefits
         designated  regulations    provided
--------------------------------------------
Bangladesh      Yes          Yes         No
Brazil          Yes          Yes         Yes
Chile           Yes          Yes         Yes
China           Yes          Yes         Yes
Colombia        Yes          Yes         Yes
Côte d'Ivoire   Yes          Yes         Yes
Ecuador         Yes          Yes         Yes
Ethiopia        No           Yes         No
Guatemala       Yes          Yes         Yes
Honduras        Yes          Yes         No
India           Yes          Yes         Yes
Indonesia       Yes          Yes         No
Iran            Yes          Yes         Yes
Italy           No           No          Yes
Jordan          No           Yes         No
Kenya           Yes          Yes         No
Mali            Yes          No          Yes
Mauritius       No           Yes         No
Mexico          Yes          Yes         Yes
Nigeria         Yes          Yes         Yes
Pakistan        Yes          Yes         No
Poland          Yes          No          Yes
Swaziland       Yes          Yes         No
Sweden          Yes          Yes         Yes
Tanzania        Yes          Yes         No
Thailand        Yes          Yes         No
Turkey          Yes          Yes         Yes
United Kingdom  No           Yes         No
United States   No           No          No
Zaire           No           Yes         Yes
Zimbabwe        Yes          Yes         Yes