Editor\'s Desk

Greetings from the Editor's Desk and wishing you a very happy new year!! Happy to bring you yet another issue of our journal and feel very grateful that contributions are coming from all over the world.I would urge everyone to raise the bar of the research happening in your countries and focus more on correct language terminology, choice of topics on analytics, conclusions and key messages.This will greatly help us in reaching our goal in PubMed indexing.I use this page for disseminating key messages which I feel need the focus of all of us in the region to uplift and upgrade not only women's health but also improve our efficiency and efficacy.We all know that maternal mortality and neonatal mortality have shown dramatic improvements in the region, but infant mortality is still an area which needs more attention.There could be many contributors to this, but I would like to focus in this issue on breastfeeding.We all understand the benefits of breastfeeding and how crucial it is in shaping and promoting an infant's health and immune status.Apart from the economic and health benefits, there are many other positive impacts on the mother and the children, most importantly our preterm babies.Breastfeeding apart from nutrition alters the infant's microbiome in such a way that boosts the brain development, immune system and benefits the long-term cognitive development.Yet it is seen that according to the WHO, only 48% of the mothers exclusively breastfeed their babies.Though breastfeeding is a natural behavior, it may require appropriate support from all of us and we all need to take charge and call for exclusive breastfeeding and create mother-and baby-friendly environment in our hospitals and cumulative approach of the consultant health staff, pediatricians, lactation consultants and the mother in promoting evidence-based infant feeding practices.This will take us a long way in not only reducing our NMR and IMR rates but also reduce metabolic diseases and prevalence of breast and ovarian cancer in mothers.Let us take a pledge to promote exclusive breastfeeding for better mother and child outcomes."While breastfeeding may not be seen as the right choice for every parent, it is the best choice for every baby."-Amy Spangler Looking forward to many more inputs and interactions from each and every one of you.