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. 1994;72(4):589–601.

Drinking-water quality, sanitation, and breast-feeding: their interactive effects on infant health.

J VanDerslice 1, B Popkin 1, J Briscoe 1
PMCID: PMC2486614  PMID: 7923538

Abstract

The promotion of proper infant feeding practices and the improvement of environmental sanitation have been two important strategies in the effort to reduce diarrhoeal morbidity among infants. Breast-feeding protects infants by decreasing their exposure to water- and foodborne pathogens and by improving their resistance to infection; good sanitation isolates faecal material from the human environment, reducing exposures to enteric pathogens. Taken together, breast-feeding and good sanitation form a set of sequential barriers that protect infants from diarrhoeal pathogens. As a result, breast-feeding may be most important if the sanitation barrier is not in place. This issue is explored using data from a prospective study of 2355 urban Filipino infants during the first 6 months of life. Longitudinal multivariate analyses are used to estimate the effects of full breast-feeding and mixed feeding on diarrhoeal disease at different levels of sanitation. Breast-feeding provides significant protection against diarrhoeal disease for infants in all environments. Administration of even small portions of contaminated water supplements to fully breast-fed infants nearly doubles their risk of diarrhoea. Mixed-fed and weaned infants consume much greater quantities of supplemental liquids, and as a result, the protective effect of full breast-feeding is greatest when drinking-water is contaminated. Similarly, full breast-feeding has stronger protective effects among infants living in crowded, highly contaminated settings.

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Selected References

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