Globally, only 38 percent of infants under the age of six months are exclusively breastfed, though research shows that optimal breastfeeding is the single most effective preventive intervention for reducing infant mortality.

Much needs to be done in the area of lowering child mortality and maternal mortality in Andhra Pradesh, although trends from a survey in one district indicate some progress. The paper makes some recommendations for policy initiatives on the basis of field work dat. The paper is based on research...

What are the constraints to efficient birth registration? How do people view the compulsory registering of births? This paper reports on a Readiness Assessment study on Universal Birth Registration in Nalgonda district in Andhra Pradesh. The study was aimed at assessing and documenting the...

There are many nutrition policies in developing countries. What are the challenges faced by these malnutrition policies? There are many countries which have successfully included nutrition in their development agenda. Malnutrition should be given policy priority in the development programmes of...

This paper provides estimates of the costs of organic agriculture (OA) programs, and sets them in the context of the costs of attaining the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It analyzes the costs of OA programs in four case studies: Wanzai, PRC; Wuyuan, PRC; Kandy, Sri...

Boosting women’s relative control of income and other economic resources has so many consequences that positively enhance both gender equality and development that female economic empowerment may be close to being a “magic potion.†[Paper presented at the 100th Annual Meeting of...

This study is a cross-sectional comparative study between baseline (2006), mid-line (2009) and end-line (2011) surveys in 50 sub-districts from the first phase of the programme. Thirty thousand households from 50 sub-districts were selected in two steps: i) 30 villages were selected from each...

In under-resourced settings, where sanitation and safe water are often lacking, breastfeeding can be life-saving. Breastfeeding protects against infectious diseases, especially gastrointestinal infections, which largely contribute to child morbidity and mortality in developing countries (1)....