Simple steps to equity in child survival.

Abstract

Although the number of child deaths has declined globally over the past 20 years, many countries still lag behind their millennium development goal targets, and inequity in child health remains a pernicious problem both between and within countries. Breastfeeding is a key intervention to reduce child mortality, and in an article published in BMC Medicine, Roberts and colleagues have shown that breastfeeding interventions can have a significant role in reducing inequity in child health. With the proper attention paid to overcoming the barriers to scaling up breastfeeding interventions, deployment of effective interventions in health facilities and the community, and improvements in support for breastfeeding interventions across society, many countries that are struggling to meet their millennium development goals could make significant gains in child survival and inequity.