Infant mortality and breast-feeding in North-Eastern Brazil.

Summary The effects of breast-feeding on infant health have been a topic of considerable discussion in recent years. In this paper multivariate techniques are used to examine the relationship between the failure to breast-feed and mortality among infants in four states of north east Brazil. It was found that breast-fed children were significantly more likely to survive infancy than children who were never breast-fed, even when other socio-economic, demographic and health variables were taken into account. This relationship was much more marked in rural than in urban settings. Other variables significantly associated with mortality were parity, mother's age at child's birth, mother's employment status and use of maternal/child health services. These findings are important for the particular population studied as well as for much of Latin America where incidence and duration of breast-feeding tend to be low but infant mortality is quite high