
Policies, programs, and funding that aim to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding are critical for enabling all women to breastfeed and for increasing breastfeeding rates. Monitoring the progress of country-level breastfeeding policies, programs, and funding is necessary and it should be protected from commercial influence.
Monitoring helps to identify gaps in support and allow prioritization of action on areas that need improvement. Quality, routine data collection and monitoring of early, exclusive, and continued breastfeeding to assess declines or improvements in breastfeeding practices is of key importance.
Monitoring of breastfeeding practices, programs, policies, and funding for breastfeeding interventions is critical for understanding if improvements in breastfeeding efforts and outcomes are being made to reach global targets, and it is essential that this is done at least once every five years.