DUTKI MARY
Monday, 15 August 2011

Longer breastfeeding is necessary to protect children against fatal infectious diseases, especially those common in low resource settings.
However due to the risk of HIV transmission from an HIV infected mother to her infant during breastfeeding, early weaning had been recommended to reduce this HIV transmission.
A recent study conducted in Zambia has however found that halting breastfeeding early causes more harm than good for children who are not infected with HIV, and are born to HIV positive mothers.
In the Zambia study, published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal last month, the safety of stopping breast-feeding at different ages for mortality of uninfected children born to HIV-infected mothers was evaluated by recruiting 958 women and their infants into an early weaning trial.
These women and their infants were followed up from birth to two years after birth. One half of these women weaned their infants abruptly at four months, while the other half continued breastfeeding.
Analysis of the duration of breastfeeding and the deaths occurring among the infants showed a 9.4% death rate among uninfected children by 12 months of age and | More »