National Journal of Community Medicine│Volume 9│Issue 10│Oct 2018 Page 778 ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE pISSN 0976 3325│eISSN 2229 6816 Open Access Article www.njcmindia.org Do Mothers from Urban Area Optimally Breastfeed Their Babies as Compared to Mothers in Village? - A Cross-Sectional Community Survey in Vadodara District Manish M Kathad 1 , Divyangkumar N Patel 1 , Shiv Patel 2 , Simoni Sarodia 2 , Krupali Savaliya 2 , Heli Shah 2 , Kunal Shah 2 Financial Support: None declared Conflict of Interest: None declared Copy Right: The Journal retains the copyrights of this article. However, re- production is permissible with due acknowledgement of the source. How to cite this article: Kathad MM, Patel DN, Patel S, Sarodia S, Savaliya K, Shah H, Shah K. Do Mothers from Urban Area Optimally Breastfeed Their Babies as Compared to Mothers in Village? - A Cross- Sectional Community Survey in Vado- dara District. Natl J Community Med 2018;9(10):778-782 Author’s Affiliation: 1 Asso Prof, Dept of Community Medi- cine; 2 Final MBBS students, Smt. B. K. Shah Medical Institute & Research Cen- tre, Sumandeep Vidyapeeth, Gujarat Correspondence Dr Divyangkumar N Patel drdivpatel@gmail.com Date of Submission: 27-08-18 Date of Acceptance: 14-10-18 Date of Publication: 31-10-18 ABSTRACT Introduction: In India, despite numerous initiatives by govern- ment and private NGOs on breastfeeding, there has been poor im- provement in rate of exclusive breastfeeding. Current study aimed to perform comparative analysis of rural and urban community’s perspectives on exclusive breastfeeding in Vadodara city Methods: Hundred mother-newborn babies’ pairs (n=50 from vil- lage and n=50 from town)were selected for this cross-sectional survey. Demographic information along with knowledge, attitude and practices’ details about exclusive breastfeeding was obtained. Differences in approaches were assessed using chi square and t- test for categorical and continuous variable respectively.P<0.05 was considered to be criteria to prove statistical significance. Results: Almost half of the subjects (N=54) had incomplete knowledge about breastfeeding attachment and positioning. No significant differences in EBF practices were found in both rural and urban mothers. None of the mothers practiced use of top feed, artificial nipple like means for feeding their infants. Conclusion: Rural and Urban mothers had no difference in breast- feeding approaches with poor knowledge about breastfeeding at- tachment and positioning. Thus it could be recommended to have inclusive policy interventions for regarding awareness and strate- gic implementation on breastfeeding. Keywords: Breast feeding, knowledge, newborn, EBF INTRODUCTION Maternal and Child Health, being one of the major public health concerns, has gained great attention. Due to innovative solutions, there is a gain in ad- vocacy for maternal and child development. Exclu- sive Breastfeeding has paramount importance in the child nutrition and maternal health 1 . Studies have demonstrated breastfeeding to have strong positive effect on infant survival, growth and de- velopment 2,3 . It is also proven that even for HIV positive mothers, exclusive breastfeeding has shown positive clinical impact 4 .Lack of exclusive breastfeeding has shown risk of mortality due to diarrhoea 5 and long term complications like diabe- tes 6 . Despite plenty of awareness campaigns, there remains skill-gap in form of inappropriate feeding practices with suboptimal outcomes 7 . It is studied that majority problems related to breastfeeding could be avoided with proper breast attachment 8 . In India, despite numerous initiatives by govern- ment and private NGOs on breastfeeding, there has been no improvement in rate of exclusive breastfeeding. As per National Family Health Sur- vey (NFHS-3) report 9 , only 47% of the newborn babies were breastfed in early period with exclu- sive breast-milk. Moreover, several misconceptions regarding breast milk’s effectiveness has led to re- placement feeding or mixed feeding 10 especially in rural area. It has been noted that Indian women were prone to give up early breastfeeding due to