Infants and young children are most vulnerable to malnutrition in the first two years of life. Global indicators tracking progress in promoting exclusive breastfeeding for infants 0-6 months are available; they have been very powerful tools for monitoring, programming, and advocacy. But many children falter and become malnourished after 6 months, once mothers begin the process of weaning them to poor-quality family foods. Until now, we have lacked global indicators to assess the quality of feeding during the critical 6-23 month window of opportunity for preventing malnutrition. The new Infant and Young Child Feeding indicators provide the first global tools for assessing and tracking progress during this critical window.

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