External evaluation and self-monitoring of the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative’s maternity hospitals in Brazil

摘要

BackgroundIn Brazil, the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) proposes following the criteria, the “Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding”, International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and Good birth and delivery practices. Brazilian Baby-Friendly Hospitals are reassessed triennially by external evaluators and annually by self-monitoring. This study aimed to verify if the self-monitoring system fulfills its role of enabling accredited hospitals to assess and improve their compliance with the BFHI criteria. In this sense, we will analyze the self-monitoring evaluation results and compare them with those of the external reassessment.