Breastfeeding practices of health professionals and care workers in Turkey.

Breastfeeding has a significant positive impact on the health of infants and is the best nutrition source. Health professionals/care workers play a considerable role in the promotion of breast-feeding. The knowledge and attitude level of health professionals/care workers and its influence on their own breastfeeding behaviour was investigated. Two hundred sixty three of 345 health care workers (response rate = 76.2%) working in Children and Birth Hospitals and primary health care centres in a rural city (Isparta) in south Turkey participated in this study. A questionnaire was administered. Descriptive statistics and chi2 test have been used (alpha = 0.05) to analyse the data. Seventy four (41.1%) of the respondents with children (n = 180) exclusively nursed their children for less than 4 months; 62 (34.4%) nursed beyond 6 months. Physicians with children (n = 14, 53.8%) were used to exclusively breastfeed less than 4 months (chi2 (4) = 9.76, p = 0.045). This study showed a difference between health professionals/care workers attitudes and knowledge level and their or their spouses breastfeeding behaviour. The reason why knowledge level of health professionals did not translate into their own or their spouses' breastfeeding practices needs to be evaluated in further studies.