ABSTRACT
A global perspective of high infant morbidity and mortality, high prevalence of malnutrition and low prevalence of breastfeeding heralded the global declaration to protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding through the baby friendly hospital initiative in 1990. Several hospitals were designated baby friendly. Mothers with children aged 0 - 2 3 months were randomly sampled in a cross-sectional study to assess the impact of the BFHI in Azare, a town with a General Hospital designated baby friendly in 1997. The ancient town is predominantly inhabited by Hausas and Fulanis and the mothers are mostly housewives. The full set of data obtained was analysed. Breastfeeding remained universal with 66.67% of mothers initiating breastfeeding within one hour of delivery. Exclusive breastfeeding was low with 16.67% at four months and steadily declining to 14.78% at six months. Water in addition to breastmilk was widely given to infants under six months as indicated by the high breastmilk + water rate of 74.78%. Cultural beliefs rather than ignorance were identified as hindering exclusive breastfeeding as 58.57% of all mothers had average knowledge on breastfeeding. Predominant breastfeeding rate was 73.54% while the timely complementary feeding rate was 62.67%. Breastfeeding was well continued into the second year of life as indicated by the high rate of 95.31% at one year and 75.00% at two years. Feeding bottles are rarely used as shown by the low bottle feeding rate of 9.17%. Diarrhoea tends to occur more in non-exclusive than exclusively breastfed infants. There was unexpectedly no association between increasing mother's education and exclusive breastfeeding.