Breast-feeding in Bangladesh

The Helen Keller International Food-Frequency Method Underestimates Vitamin A Intake Where Sustained Breastfeeding is Common

A recent innovation in assessing community vitamin A status is the Helen Keller International food-frequency method, which is based on weekly intakes of key foods among pre-school children. Since it excludes breastmilk, we investigated whether the amount of breastmilk received by 40 children aged one to three years in a rural area of Bangladesh contributed significantly to their vitamin A intake. Vitamin A intake was indirectly calculated from the consumption of breastmilk, which was quantified over a 9-hour period by a test-weighing technique. The estimated mean 24-hour milk intake was 548 g for the 97% who were breastfed at 12 to 23 months and 312 g for the 73% who were breastfed at 24 to 36 months. This represents an average daily intake of 41% and 23% of the safe recommended daily intake (400 RE) for vitamin A, respectively. The Helen Keller International food-frequency method should be revalidated for settings where breastfeeding is sustained beyond infancy.

Son preference and child replacement in Bangladesh: a new look at the child survival hypothesis

Birth history data from women in the 1975-76 Bangladesh Fertility Survey were used to search for intentions to replace dead children. The median intervals between successive births of orders (i) and (i + 1) were not shorter when some siblings of orders below (i) had died. Nor was the median duration between the death of a child and the first posthumous birth shorter when the dead child was a boy or when it was survived by fewer than two brothers. The median intervals were generally shorter when the mother lived in an urban rather than a rural area but this difference was attributable only to the shorter duration of breast-feeding by urban women. These results disputed the notions that the timing of births was deliberately quicker to replace a dead child, that attempts at replacement were sex-selective, or that child replacement intentions were stronger in urban than in rural populations.