Pam Morrison writes, about the WHO 2003 Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding and other recent WHO documents:  "Whatever the reason, when we look to more recent WHO documents to provide back-up 
for our current breastfeeding advocacy, we find that clear endorsement of _breastfeeding_ is actually pretty sketchy, and in some cases non-existent. 
Has anyone else noticed this too? - I'd be interested in others' impressions."

Here are my impressions, which differ from Pam's in this case.

This post sent me straight to the .pdf in question at http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2003/9241562218.pdf  which I did not recall as being equivocal in its support of breastfeeding.  Breastfeeding is repeatedly mentioned throughout the document, as in this example, from the section on 'Achieving the strategy's objectives':  A first step to achieving the objectives of this strategy is to reaffirm the relevance – indeed the urgency – of the four operational targets of the Innocenti Declaration on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding.'  Those four targets involve establishing a national BF coordinator in each country, assuring that all maternity services practice the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding, and "giving effect to the principles and aim of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent relevant Health Assembly resolutions in their entirety" and  "enacting imaginative legislation protecting the breastfeeding rights of working women and establishing means for its enforcement."

The importance of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and of continuing to breastfeed throughout at least the first two years of life while safe complementary foods are introduced are emphasized many times, starting in the introduction and going right through the document.

If this is a 'sketchy' endorsement of breastfeeding, I would like to see the document that would qualify as 'clearly' endorsing it.  I've found the informational materials for health professionals at this part of the WHO website to be generally good, unfortunately far better than the advice I hear dispensed by pediatricians, other physicians, midwives and child health nurses on a daily basis in this country. 

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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