National Guidelines on Infant and Young Child Feeding

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : As per the National Guidelines on Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health and thereafter, to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, infants should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond. Infant milk substitute or infant food should only be used, if recommended on health grounds.

The  objectives  of  the  National Guidelines  on  IYCF  are  to bring about improvement in optimal  feeding practices for infants and young children and raise awareness for achieving  optimal  feeding  practices.

The following steps have been taken by Government to ensure Infant and Young Child Feeding: Infant  Milk  Substitutes  Feeding  Bottles,  and  Infant  Foods  (Regulation  of  Production,  Supply  and  Distribution) Act,  1993,  as  amended  2003,  has  been  enacted  in  the  country  to protect, promote and support breastfeeding and ensure proper use of infant foods; Under the Anganwadi Services Scheme, counselling is provided to Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers on infant and young child feeding practices; The  Pradhan  Mantri Matru  Vandana  Yojana (PMMVY), which  is a centrally sponsored  Conditional Maternity  Benefit  scheme  of  the Government  for  pregnant  and  lactating  women, under  which cash  incentives  are  provided partly  compensating  for  their wage  loss  to improve  health seeking behaviour amongst the Pregnant Women & Lactating Mothers. Recent amendment in Maternity Benefit Act is another important step in strengthening the IYCF practices.

The POSHAN  Abhiyaan focuses on social  and behavioural change communication and thus explicitly paving  the way for a mass  movement  to promote a transformative  change, to  address  the  malnutrition  related  challenges  and create awareness on holistic nutrition including promotion of optimal infant and young child feeding  practices.

Home Based Care for Young Children (HBYC) has been initiated as an extension of Home Based Newborn Care (HBNC) to provide community based care by ASHA workers with focus on improvement in child rearing practices, nutrition counselling, and breastfeeding promotion till 15th month of life.

Minister of State (Health and Family Welfare) Ashwini Kumar Choubey stated this in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on March 17, 2020, according to a PIB release.