Editorial Infant feeding , poverty and human development

The relationship between poverty and human development touches on a central aim of the International Breastfeeding Journal's editorial policy which is to support and protect the health and wellbeing of all infants through the promotion of breastfeeding. It is proposed that exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding to 12 months, could prevent 1,301,000 deaths or 13% of all child deaths under 5 years in a hypothetical year. Although there is a conventional wisdom that poverty 'protects' breastfeeding in developing countries, poverty actually threatens breastfeeding, both directly and indirectly. In the light of increasingly aggressive marketing behaviour of the infant formula manufacturers and the need to protect the breastfeeding rights of working women, urgent action is required to ensure the principles and aim of the International Code of Breastmilk Substitutes, and subsequent relevant resolutions of the World Health Assembly, are implemented. If global disparities in infant health and development are to be significantly reduced, gender inequities associated with reduced access to education and inadequate nutrition for girls need to be addressed. Improving women's physical and mental health will lead to better developmental outcomes for their children. Editorial October 2007 has been dedicated by the Council of Science Editors to the global theme of 'Poverty and Human Development'. The Council's initiative follows earlier successes with simultaneous publications on a global theme across scientific journals. In 1996, 36 journals from 21 countries published articles on 'Emerging and re-emerging global microbial threats'. The following year, 97 journals in 31 countries published on the theme of 'Ageing'. The objective of this strategy is to raise awareness, and to stimulate research and international collaboration on important topics. In a call for submissions on the current global theme of poverty and human development from the perspective of breastfeeding, the International Breastfeeding Journal (IBJ) referred potential contributors to the emerging policy development framework of the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Global Strategy on Infant and Young Child Feeding [1]. The relationship between poverty and human development touches on a central aim of IBJ's editorial policy which is to support and protect the health and wellbeing of all infants through the promotion of breastfeeding. In view of the significance of the global theme, the lack of response to the call for papers was disappointing. Nevertheless, it remains important that this journal endorse the intention of the global theme through editorial commentary. Published: 22 October 2007 International Breastfeeding Journal 2007, 2:14 doi:10.1186/1746-4358-2-14 Received: 26 September 2007 Accepted: 22 October 2007 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1746-4358/2/14 © 2007 Beasley and Amir; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.