Mortality from diarrhoea
In a landmark study in southern Brazil, Victora et al. (11, 12) found that, compared with ex-clusively breast-fed (EBF) infants, those who were partially breast-fed (PBF) had a 4.2 times higher risk of death caused by diarrhoea, which increased to 14.2 times higher for those not receiving any breast milk (NBF). Protection was greatest among infants aged 0-2 months (rela-tive risk (RR) for PBF = 5.3 and for NBF = 23.3). Each additional daily feed of breast milk re-duced the risk of diarrhoea death by 20%. There was no evidence that the protective effect persisted after weaning. Breast-feeding also afforded protection against deaths from persistent diarrhoea (RR for PBF = 4.3 and for NBF = 10.0) and possibly for those from dysenteric infec-tion (RR for PBF = 4.9 and NBF = 3.0).