PROBIT III & IV

The Promotion of Breastfeeding Intervention Trial (PROBIT) is the largest cluster-randomised controlled trial ever conducted in the area of human lactation during infancy. The trial is based on the long-term follow-up of 17 046 healthy mothers and infants who were originally enrolled into the trial in the Republic of Belarus (PROBIT I, Principal Investigator: Professor Michael Kramer, McGill University, Canada). In which 31 maternity hospitals and one each of their affiliated polyclinics (where children are followed for routine health care), were randomised either to the experimental intervention of breastfeeding promotion or the control arm of continuing the prevailing breastfeeding practices at the time of randomisation. The intervention produced two randomised cohorts with substantially different exposure to breastfeeding, providing a unique opportunity to test, in an intention to treat analysis, the affects of breastfeeding on health outcomes.

The investigators are: Professor Michael Kramer, McGill University, Canada; Professor Richard Martin; University of Bristol, UK and Dr Emily Oken, Harvard University, USA.

We are indebted to our collaborators in Belarus based in the National Research and Applied Medicine Centre 'Mother and Child', Minsk and all the pediatricians involved in this study; the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Ministry of Health in Minsk, who have collaborated in all phases of PROBIT and all the children and parents who have made this study possible.

 

 

Map of Belarus