Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative and the Ten Steps

Technical summary

Implementation guidance, 2018 (ISBN 978-92-4-151380-7, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO; 64 pages). The revised Ten Steps are split into critical management procedures (including facility policies and staff competency) and key clinical practices (including antenatal information, immediate postnatal care, support with breastfeeding, supplementation, rooming-in, responsive feeding, feeding bottles, teats and pacifiers, and care at discharge). The guidance says that as of 2017 only 10% of infants were born in a facility currently designated Baby-friendly, and that the programme has typically been implemented by designating facilities that volunteer and can document full adherence to the Ten Steps. The revised steps follow the 2017 guideline on breastfeeding in maternity facilities. A large trial in Belarus tested an intervention modelled on the initiative. The who.int page date is 1 January 2018 and the IRIS date 2018-06-26.