Breastfeeding Rates and Breastfeeding Practices in Taiwan:A City and County Survey of Women

Objectives, The objectives of this study were to report the City and the County levels' breastfeeding rates by participants in the maternity experience survey of the Taiwan. Including hospitalization and at 1 and 2 months after delivery. Methods. The 11,015 eligible Women were selected from a randomly selected sample of infants born 4-8 months before the maternity experience survey, and stratified by City or County. Birth mothers living with their infants at the time of interview were invited to participate in the Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) conducted by Taiwan Epidemiology Association (TEA) on behalf of Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health. Results. The prevalence of exclusive and mixed breastfeeding rates was 96.18% and 96.30% during the hospitalization, 64.32% and 86.93% at 1 month and 51.55% and 74.05% at 2 month, respectively. There were significant variations within city and county in the rate of breastfeeding. Hualien county had the highest exclusive breastfeeding rates, secondly was Hsinchu city, and Taichung city was the third. Conclusions. The high response rate and women's abilities to provide information on this topic demonstrates that the City and County survey would be an effective method of providing important maternal and infant health information. The data collected would allow Health Department to carry out more effective surveillance to fulfilled breastfeeding policy and practice.