The Model Chapter on Infant and Young Child Feeding is intended for use in basic training of health professionals. It describes essential knowledge and basic skills that every health professional who works with mothers and young children should master. The Model Chapter can be used by teachers and students as a complement to textbooks or as a concise reference manual.

WHO and UNICEF jointly developed this global strategy to focus world attention on the impact that feeding practices have on the nutritional status, growth and development, health, and thus the very survival of infants and young children. The strategy is the result of a comprehensive two-year participatory process. It is based on the evidence of nutrition's significance in the early months and years of life, and of the crucial role that appropriate feeding practices play in achieving optimal health outcomes. The strategy is intended as a guide for action; it identifies interventions with a proven positive impact; it emphasizes providing mothers and families the support they need to carry out their crucial roles, and it explicitly defines the obligations and responsibilities in this regards of governments, international organizations, and other concerned parties.

Infant formulas are unique because they are the only source of nutrition for many infants during the first 4 to 6 months of life. They are critical to infant health since they must safely support growth and development during a period when the consequences on inadequate nutrition are most severe. Existing guidelines and regulations for evaluating the safety of conventional food ingredients (e.g., vitamins and minerals) added to infant formulas have worked well in the past; however they are not sufficient to address the diversity of potential new ingredients proposed by manufacturers to develop formulas that mimic the perceived and potential benefits of human milk. This book, prepared at the request of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada, addresses the regulatory and research issues that are critical in assessing the safety of the addition of new ingredients to infants.

Abstract: Children in tropical and subtropical, technically underdeveloped areas of the world suffer from malnutrition as a result of poverty, unavailability of suitable food, lack of knowledge and superstition. Education and assistance is needed as part of the general attempt to raise the standard of living with a resultant tendency to limitation of family size and drop in the birth-rate. The nutritional level of the community and its young children is positively related to the educational and economic level of the community, to the availablity of sufficient food of the right quality and to the adequacy and accessibility of the health services. The problems of infant nutrition are dealt with from the point of view of the health worker in the field. The viewpoint is that an understanding of methods and approaches to food problems by active, community committees is often the prime nutritional need in developing countries.