Infant and young child feeding practices in children aged fifteen to twenty months among Indian children

Infant and young child feeding practices (IYCF) impact on growth, development, cognition and eventually survival of the infant and young children. About 20 million children did not receive exclusive breastfeeding for first six months and 13 million did not get timely and appropriate complementary feeding, according to National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) data for the year 2016.WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Fund) endorses sufficient and safe complementary feeding starting after six months of life while continuing breastfeeding up to 2 years of age andbeyond.The high prevalence of malnutrition in countries like India is attributed to inappropriate complementary feeding practices such as not starting complementary foods at six months of age, inadequate macro - micronutrients intake from staple based complementary foods and failure to increase the amount and frequency of food with increasing age.