Guidelines and Minimum Standards
for the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding and Complementary Feeding
Highlights
What and how children are fed in the earliest years of life is the cornerstone of child survival, growth and development. We know that breastfeeding offers the best start in life, and that introducing high-quality complementary foods at 6 months of age is a critically important step in setting young children on the path to lifelong health, learning and prosperity.
ASEAN Member States committed to developing Guidelines and Minimum Standards as part of the ASEAN Strategic Framework and Action Plan on Nutrition 2018–2030 and the 2017 ASEAN Leaders Declaration on Ending All Forms of Malnutrition. As part of this series, UNICEF and Alive & Thrive Southeast Asia supported the ASEAN Secretariat, the Department of Health, Philippines, and the Ministry of Health, Malaysia to develop the ASEAN Guidelines and Minimum Standards for the Protection, Promotion, and Support of Breastfeeding and Complementary Feeding. By outlining the core policies and programmes for governments to adopt and setting minimum standards for implementation, ASEAN Member States now have a standard by which they can benchmark the success of their national breastfeeding and complementary feeding programs.
