At Uppsala University, I was a research advisor to Judith Mutamba, at the time Deputy Director of the Nutrition Department in the Ministry of Health Zimbabwe. This is her masters thesis, composed of two journal articles that unfortunately have never been published.

Click here to open the scanned pdf file.

IMAGE: Three adults suffering from cretinism, the most serious iodine deficiency disorder. The photo comes from www.thyroidmanager.org

This is based on a short invited talk at a conference on this topic at Cornell University, later published in its Interntional Nutrition Monograph Series.

Click here to download the scanned pdf file.

IMAGE: Child’s drawing from Bangladesh

(D’après : Breastfeeding communication strategies. T Greiner.)

L’allaitement est un processus naturel, en partie instinctif, en partie culturel, qui est normalement appris par l’exemple. Mais lorsque l’exemple s’est perdu, ce qui est le cas dans bon nombre de pays occidentaux et dans un nombre malheureusement croissant de pays en voie de développement, un certain nombre de connaissances sont nécessaires pour le réhabiliter, tant chez les mères que chez les professionnels de santé et le grand public. Or, mettre en place des stratégies efficaces de promotion n’est pas quelque chose qui s’improvise, et une campagne mal menée pourra parfois faire plus de mal que de bien.

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This so-called “Minor Field Study,” financed by Sida via the Uppsala University International Child Health unit, was carried out by Jaroslava Vagner and Helene Zättlin, with me as supervisor. It was done at the request of the Ministry of Health, with whom ICH had a multi-year cooperative partnership. These women felt a great deal of pressure to breastfeeding, something they did not do before Zimbabwe became independent over a decade earlier. It shows the crucial role played by a single local expert lactation consultant, Pamela Morrison.