Well, Italy is constantly getting berated for being behind on things, and,
unfortunately, the BFHI is no exception.  Like Canada, the government is
not interested and UNICEF Italy has done little concrete work to get the
BFHI going.  UNICEF has published lots of stuff about how important bf is,
but when they did a *launching* of the BFHI in 1993, the president of
UNICEF Italy announced that the initiative would cover ages 0-14 (you can
imagine the comments about 14 yr.olds nursing). Since then, they have
announced that they have formed a bf committee (which is not the national
one that the Innocenti Declaration talks stipulates), but it is NOT
multi-sectorial and actually only includes MDs (no midwives, LCs, LLL,
etc.).  There is no national committee on bf.

I think about 7 hospitals ( out of about 900 with maternity units) have
received certificates of commitment from UNICEF, but none have been
accredited. I went to a ceremony for the letter, and the UNICEDF rep talked
for 10 min about BFHI without EVER mentioning the word *breastfeeding*,sao
you can tell what a priority it is.  A WABA affiliate has been set up here,
and we are hoping to make a difference.  Who knows?

Anyway, that's what's happening in Italy with BFHI

Elise
__________________________________________________
Elise M. Chapin
Firenze, Italy
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