Education Improves Breastfeeding Practices in Zambia

HIV, most of them during their mother’s pregnancy, childbirth, or through breastfeeding. The Population Council’s Horizons program has tested the introduction of infant feeding counseling to inform women about ways to reduce the risk of HIV transmission during breastfeeding and to support them in their infant feeding choices. The program is being tested at antenatal care clinics in Ndola, Zambia, a low-income setting where antiretroviral drugs are unavailable. The intervention is a collaboration with three nongovernmental organizations, Hope Humana, the LINKAGES project, and the Zambia Integrated Health Project, and two government agencies, the Zambian National Food and Nutrition Commission and the Ndola District Health Management Team. The research shows that women receiving infant feeding counseling maintain healthier breastfeeding practices in the first six months of their infants’ lives. But more work is needed to increase community use of voluntary HIV counseling and testing services and to promote behavior change for preventing HIV transmission and seeking care and support for HIV infection. The Horizons program of operations research is implemented by the Population Council with the International Center for Research on Women, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, Tulane University, Family Health International, and Johns Hopkins University. Horizons is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development; its findings allow the agency and its cooperating partners to allocate limited funds most effectively on the basis of empirical information.