Breast-feeding practices in Schedule Caste communities in Haryana state.

ABSTRACT

A study was conducted to assess exclusive breast-feeding, continued breast-feeding, bottle-feeding, predominant breast-feeding, timely complementary feeding and other breast-feeding practices in 818 children in the age group of 0-3 years belonging to the Schedule Caste communities of Haryana. The exclusive breast-feeding rate was 0.15 and the predominant breast-feeding rate 0.75 in children < 4 months. Timely complementary feeding rate was 0.42. The continued breast-feeding rate at 1 year and 2 years was 0.84 and 0.58, respectively. The bottle-feeding rate, ever breast-fed rate, timely first-suckling rate and exclusive breast-feeding rate by mother were 0.09, 1.0, 0.0 and 0.15, respectively. The median duration of breast-feeding was 16 months.