Percentage of infants less than 12 months of age who are put to the breast within 1 hour of birth. The rate is calculated as follows:

# of infants 0–<12 months put
to the breast within 1 hour of delivery  x 100
total # of infants 0–<12 months

Number of infants less than 12 months old who were put to breast within 1 hour of delivery

Total # of infants less than 12 months old

Mothers’ recall of initiation of breastfeeding after delivery of infants less than 12 months of age.

Population-based surveys employing representative samples. The DHS reports the initiation of breastfeeding within 1 hour for those countries in which the breastfeeding/infant feeding module is included in the DHS.

Program records may be used to track trends in breastfeeding initiation, but not to measure the impact of program interventions because they do not report on a representative sample of the population.

TIBF is defined by the following criteria:
1. The infant is less than 12 months old, and
2. The infant was put to the breast within 1 hour of delivery.

See sample survey with questions needed to calculate the rate.

A mother may have difficulty remembering for as long as 12 months when she initiated breastfeeding for her youngest infant; thus, this indicator is subject to potential recall bias. This bias is likely to be even greater in populations that are not accustomed to remembering and conceptualizing time. However, because this particular type of bias (toward a longer or shorter period than actually occurred) is assumed to be randomly distributed across a population, the potential bias should not skew the data to misrepresent the population’s general behavior related to breastfeeding initiation.