Sofia Quintero Romero: Protection and Support of Breastfeeding With a Feminist and Social Justice Lens.

Sofia Quintero Romero graduated as a medical doctor at Universidad del Rosario, Bogotà, Colombia, in 1977. She spent a compulsory rural year working in a remote indigenous community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Columbia. In 1979 she worked in Bolivia for Terre des Hommes and Oxfam, evaluating their health projects with the Aymara Indians and in the tin mines.

Problem-based learning for in-service training on breastfeeding in Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy.

Background: Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is extensively used in pre- and post-graduate teaching programmes. However, it has been seldom used for in-service training and continuing medical education. We aimed to develop a PBL curriculum for a short in-service training on breastfeeding for maternal and child health professionals, and to assess the effect of these courses on their knowledge and skills.

A rapid ethnographic study of breastfeeding in the North and South of Italy.

Background: The past ten years have witnessed a rising trend in the prevalence and duration of breastfeeding in Italy, but breastfeeding rates increase in an unequal way; they are higher in the North of Italy than in the South. The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences, expectations and beliefs of a sample of mothers, and to identify differences, if any, between the North and the South of Italy.

Methods: The study was conducted in two regions of Italy, Friuli Venezia Giulia in the Northeast and Basilicata in the South.

Infant feeding and cost of health care: a cohort study.

Aim: To compare the use and cost of health care in infants with different feeding patterns.

Methods: Observational study on a cohort of 842 infants born in ten hospitals in northern Italy and followed up to age 12 months. Data on feeding gathered through telephone interviews with 24-hour recall.

Protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding in low-income countries.

The rates of exclusive breastfeeding and the duration of breastfeeding fall short of what is recommended by the Global Strategy on Infant and Young Child Feeding worldwide. In low-income countries this is associated with a great excess of avoidable childhood death and disease. A higher degree of protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding has the potential to avert the death of about 1.