Mapping exclusive breastfeeding in Africa between 2000 and 2017
Published July 22, 2019, in Nature Medicine (opens in a new window)
Abstract
Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF)—giving infants only breastmilk (and medications, oral rehydration salts and vitamins as needed) with no additional food or drink for their first six months of life—is one of the most effective strategies for preventing child mortality1–4. Despite these advantages, only 37%of infants under 6 months of age in Africa were exclusively breastfed in 20175, and the practice of EBF varies by population. Here, we present a fine-scale geospatial analysis of EBF prevalence and trends in 49 African countries from 2000– 2017, providing policy-relevant administrative- and nationallevel estimates. Previous national-level analyses found that most countries will not meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of 50% EBF prevalence by 20256. Our analyses show that even fewer will achieve this ambition in all subnational areas. Our estimates provide the ability to visualize subnational EBF variability and identify populations in need of additional breastfeeding support.
Citation
Bhattacharjee NV, Schaeffer LE, Marczak LB, et al. Mapping exclusive breastfeeding in Africa between 2000 and 2017. Nature Medicine. 22 July 2019. doi:10.1038/s41591-019-0525-0.
Authors
- Natalia Bhattacharjee,
- Simon Hay,
- Laura Dwyer-Lindgren,
- Christopher J.L. Murray,
- Ali Mokdad,
- Stephen Lim,
- Emmanuela Gakidou,
- Nicholas Kassebaum,
- David Smith,
- Lauren Schaeffer,
- Laurie Marczak,
- Jennifer Ross,
- Scott Swartz,
- James Albright,
- William Gardner,
- Chloe Shields,
- Amber Sligar,
- Megan Schipp,
- Brandon Pickering,
- Nathaniel Henry,
- Kimberly Johnson,
- Celia Louie,
- Michael Cork,
- Krista Steuben,
- Alice Lazzar-Atwood,
- Damaris Kinyoki,
- Aaron Osgood-Zimmerman,
- Lucas Earl,
- Jon Mosser,
- Ani Deshpande,
- Roy Burstein,
- Lauren Woyczynski,
- John VanderHeide,
- Kirsten Wiens,
- Bobby Reiner,
- Benn Sartorius,
- Nicole Weaver,
- Molly Nixon
Datasets
All our datasets are housed in our data catalog, the Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx). Visit the GHDx to download data from this article.