In 1989, an international panel of experts called attention to the irony that health workers were preventing many newborns from getting the healthiest possible food - mother's milk. Hospital maternity units were contributing, "however unwittingly," to the long decline in breast-feeding by failing to encourage moms to do it, or by introducing practices that discourage it, such as giving baby formula. The panel's statement, sponsored by the World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund, led to a global hospital reform movement called Baby Friendly. Now, a few decades later, the movement has taken root in Philadelphia, where breast-feeding rates are perennially lower than the...
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