Complications from being born too soon are the single leading cause of death among children under five, worldwide.1 Infants with low birth weight — born preterm, small for their gestational age, or both — make up about 15% of all newborns worldwide, yet account for 70% of all neonatal deaths. The intervention that addresses much of that gap is not a drug, a device, or a piece of equipment. It's a mother's chest.
World Breastfeeding Week, running August 1–7 and coordinated globally by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action alongside the World Health Organization and UNICEF, makes this case every year, just at a broader scale: breastfeeding is one of the most effective, lowest-cost interventions in global health, and it still isn't reaching enough mothers and babies.
For the smallest and sickest newborns, breastfeeding alone isn't enough. Paired with prolonged skin-to-skin contact — a combined practice called Kangaroo Mother Care — it meaningfully improves their odds of survival.
The gap between the evidence and the bedside
The evidence for Kangaroo Mother Care is strong and the practice is WHO-recommended as the standard routine of care for all preterm or low-birth-weight infants,23 yet coverage remains low across most low- and middle-income countries.
In 2014, nearly every government in the world signed onto the Every Newborn Action Plan, committing to bring Kangaroo Mother Care to most newborns who need it.5 While about half have since written it into national policy, few have gotten it to the bedside.
A 2021 systematic review of 30 implementation studies across sub-Saharan Africa found the same barriers again and again: health workers never properly trained or supervised to deliver Kangaroo Mother Care, no data system tracking which newborns actually received it, and no mechanism to catch problems once a program launched.6
Those are exactly the gaps technical assistance is built to close. At scale, that would mean training and mentoring health workers so Kangaroo Mother Care becomes a routine skill, building data systems that actually track which newborns received it and for how long, and creating an ongoing feedback loop — supervision, coaching, problem-solving — that catches gaps in practice and fixes them. It would also mean supporting the community follow-up that keeps skin-to-skin contact going after a newborn goes home.
Finding out what it would take
The Accelerator is how we decide, systematically, which promising interventions are worth building into programs at scale — and which aren’t. Every intervention has to pass the same bar: a strong evidence base, a compelling cost-effectiveness case, and a credible path to reaching people at scale.
Kangaroo Mother Care clears the first two easily. The evidence base is strong enough that WHO recommends it outright, and early cost-effectiveness modeling suggests it could compare well to other proven “best buys” in global health.
What’s harder to answer is the third question: what would it actually take to deliver Kangaroo Mother Care consistently, at scale, in places where it isn’t reaching most of the newborns who need it? That’s the gap the Accelerator exists to close. Increasingly, we’re looking for interventions that can build on health systems already in motion — reaching mothers and newborns through touchpoints and relationships that already exist — rather than standing up something new alongside them.
To find where that might be possible, we looked at the burden of prematurity and low birth weight across the countries where we already work, and at where we had the partnerships to move quickly. That process pointed to Liberia, where our maternal and newborn health work — Syphilis-Free Start, which helped drive syphilis screening at antenatal visits from 7% to 88% coverage in 3.5 years — gave us a foothold most countries in our portfolio don’t offer. Liberia is where we’re starting, though it won’t necessarily be the only place — or even the best long-term fit. That’s part of what the next phase of work is for.
Over the coming months, we’ll be in maternity wards and newborn units with Ministry of Health staff, assessing whether facilities can support mothers and infants staying together around the clock, and how much training, adaptation, and follow-up support Kangaroo Mother Care would need to work in this context, as opposed to the conditions it’s been studied in. Through this formative research, we’re trying to understand what’s genuinely needed before we commit to building anything.
It’s too early to say whether or when a Kangaroo Mother Care program will launch. What we can say is that a proven intervention, with a real gap between policy and practice, is worth the work of finding out.
World Breastfeeding Week: Frequently Asked Questions
What is World Breastfeeding Week and why is it celebrated?
World Breastfeeding Week runs every August 1–7, marking the anniversary of the 1990 Innocenti Declaration on breastfeeding.7 It's coordinated by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action alongside WHO and UNICEF, with a new global theme each year. WBW 2026 turns to something specific: tracking which breastfeeding investments are actually reducing hunger and poverty, and sharing what's working.8
Why is breastfeeding support a public health issue?
Only 48% of infants under six months are exclusively breastfed worldwide — short of the 60% target the World Health Assembly set for 2030.9 That gap matters because exclusive breastfeeding has the single largest potential impact on child mortality of any preventive intervention available today. Closing it isn't about convincing more mothers to breastfeed. It's about building health systems that make it possible.
What are the most common challenges to breastfeeding globally?
Only one in five countries trains its doctors and nurses in infant feeding, leaving new mothers without guidance exactly when they need it most.10 Weak maternity leave policies, aggressive marketing of infant formula, and cultural practices like discarding a newborn's first milk compound the gap.11 Underneath all of it: most low-resource health systems simply don't build breastfeeding counseling into routine care.
How can we support breastfeeding mothers?
The evidence points to three things working together: trained health workers who counsel mothers before and after birth, workplace policies — paid leave, lactation space, flexible hours — that don't force a choice between a job and a baby, and peer-counselor networks reaching the mothers a clinic never sees.1012 Where all three exist, breastfeeding rates rise. Where even one is missing, the others struggle to compensate.
Why is breastfeeding important to babies? To mothers?
For babies, breast milk's antibodies lower the risk of diarrhea, respiratory infections, and ear infections, and are linked to lower rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes later in life. For mothers, breastfeeding speeds postpartum recovery and is linked to a lower risk of breast and ovarian cancer, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure.13 The benefits run in both directions — which is exactly why breastfeeding support has to reach mother and baby together.
In rural areas, where can parents get breastfeeding support?
In most low-resource settings, the answer is a community health worker or peer counselor trained to make home visits — not a hospital or clinic.12 Some programs now pair that in-person support with mobile tools, like SMS-based coaching piloted with rural mothers in India.14 But access stays uneven: national statistics can look strong while rural and remote areas still go without a trained counselor nearby.15
What are the risks of breastfeeding without support?
More than 800,000 child deaths a year could be prevented through optimal breastfeeding, mostly by reducing diarrhea, respiratory infection, and malnutrition linked to diluted formula. The risk climbs highest where clean water is scarce — roughly 780 million people lack it, and mixing formula with unsafe water spreads the bacterial infections that put infants in danger.16 Infants who go without breastfeeding, especially where mothers have little access to guidance, face a measurably higher risk of death in their first year of life.
- Walani SR. Global burden of preterm birth. International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics. 2020;150(1):31–33.
- “Immediate Kangaroo Mother Care and Survival of Infants with Low Birth Weight”, New England Journal of Medicine 384 (2021): 2028–2038.
- Conde-Agudelo A, Díaz-Rossello JL. Kangaroo mother care to reduce morbidity and mortality in low birthweight infants. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2016; summarized by WHO's eLENA review summary.
- Kangaroo mother care: a clinical practice guide. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2025 (ISBN 978-92-4-011591-0).
- Every newborn: coverage targets and milestones to 2025. WHO / Every Newborn partnership.
- Woo Kinshella M-L, et al. Barriers and facilitators of facility-based kangaroo mother care in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth. 2021.
- World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) — WABA.
- World Breastfeeding Week 2026.
- On World Breastfeeding Week, countries urged to invest in health systems and support breastfeeding mothers — UNICEF.
- This World Breastfeeding Week, UNICEF and WHO call for equal access to breastfeeding support.
- A Systematic Review of Multifactorial Barriers Related to Breastfeeding.
- Effectiveness of community health workers delivering preventive interventions for maternal and child health in low- and middle-income countries.
- Benefits of Breastfeeding for You & Baby — Cleveland Clinic.
- A training curriculum for an mHealth supported peer counseling program to promote exclusive breastfeeding in rural India.
- Time to invest in supporting those who support breastfeeding — World Vision.
- The cost of not breastfeeding: global results from a new tool.