Breast feeding practices among health care professionals in a tertiary care hospital from South India.

Personal breastfeeding experiences of health care professionals play a major role in influencing their attitudes and expertise regarding counseling and managing breastfeeding issues in patients. This study was done with an objective of studying the current breastfeeding practices among health care professionals (HP) and their spouses and the factors influencing them. All children < 5 years of age, residing in hospital's residential quarters, were included. A detailed breastfeeding history demographic data were obtained following a semi-structured interview with mothers. Among 81 children included for analysis, in 73 children (90.1%), an initiation of breastfeeding was within 24 hours of birth and in 36 children (44.4%), it was within first hour of life. 43 children (58.1%) were exclusively breast fed for 6 months. Mean duration of EBF was 5.3 months and total duration of breastfeeding was 13.2 months. Gender of HP, gender of the child and socio-economic factors were not found to significantly affect breastfeeding practices among HP.