Published on Thursday in the medical journal The Lancet, a latest two-part comprehensive report could be billed as the biggest and most detailed analysis of the present research on breast-feeding worldwide, and will be helpful in bringing about change in the United States and globally.

Over 1,300 studies, including some commissioned particularly for this report, which is dedicated to the levels, trends and advantages of breast-feeding.

If we talk about the health implications solely, new estimates produced for the report have significantly scaled up breast-feeding to near-universal levels for new-born children and young children, which might save 820,000 children's lives per year worldwide, preventing 13% of all deaths of children below five.

In response to questions via email, one of the co-authors of the report, Dr. Cesar Victora, emeritus professor of epidemiology at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, said that for a baby, breast milk acts as first vaccine to help battle disease and illness.

According to the report, one third of respiratory infections and nearly 50% of all diarrhea episodes may be avoided in low- and middle-income nations through breast-feeding. In high-income nations, breast-feeding decreases the risk of sudden infant deaths by over one-third.

The report said that children who are breast-fed for longer have been discovered to have higher intelligence as compared to the ones who are breast-fed for shorter spans.

Shawn Baker, director of nutrition for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said that it is a big intervention for both ensuring the survival of kids and then for ensuring their future health and development. The foundation had provided a $650,000 grant to the WHO to fund the report.

Baker added, “I always characterize it that this is not some second-rate intervention we're trying to push on developed worlds, but this is really state of the art, the gold standard intervention that's relevant anywhere in the world”.