The four-month-old baby was crying at the top of his voice while the mother was cursing her fate sitting beside the baby for her failure to buy tinned milk being a wife of a rickshawpuller at Kamrangeer Char area of the city. Failing to provide tinned milk, she was giving the baby rice powder mixing with water. The baby was also receiving breast milk. "If I could afford, I would give the baby tinned milk that must contain enough nutrition,' said Laila, mother of the baby, adding that for the lack of proper nutrition, the boy suffers from diarrhoea frequently and his weight has also been reduced. But the poor woman does not know that she herself is doing harm to the baby by depriving him of exclusive breastfeeding that means giving him only breast milk for first six months. As she added powdered rice and water, the baby could not digest them. Moreover, as the baby was taking artificial diet the amount of his receiving breast milk was also reduced. So the baby had been suffering from diarrhoea frequently and the condition of his health was deteriorating. "Tinned milk can do nothing here and there is nothing equivalent to breast milk which should be provided uninterruptedly for six months,' said Prof Sufia Khatoon of the Institute of Child and Mother Health (IMCH). " We should not add anything beside breast milk for first six months. Even no water,' she said, adding that most of the mothers in our county are afraid of applying this scientific approach and their lack of confidence just increases the suffering of the babies. According to Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007, only 43 percent of the children under three years were exclusively breastfed. Experts said if the rate of exclusive breastfeeding could reach 100 percent, the rate of infant mortality would reduce by 13 percent in the country. In urban areas, 80 percent of mothers feed their infants artificial milk (powder or infant formula) besides breastfeeding, said Dr Fatima Parveen Chowdhury of the Institute of Public Health and Nutrition (IPHN), adding that as a significant number of urban mothers are now working outside, they find bottle feeding convenient for their babies. At the same time, lucrative advertisements also increase the demand of the powdered milk and Bangladesh imports milk products worth million dollars every year, she said. "Though it has been seen that 91 percent of the babies are receiving breast milk, it is not exclusive. Whereas exclusive breastfeeding is the first immunisation for the baby, a perfect nutrition and protection from infection,' said Senior Scientist of ICDDR,B and Chairman of Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation Dr SK Roy . It also helps neurological development of the baby, protects it against allergic disease. Concurrently, exclusive breastfeeding contributes to family planning, protects mother health and also helps the family economically. The experts stressed that breastfeeding at the first hour of birth could reduce the death of at least 30,000 newborns in the country a year. The first milk is rich in immune components and protects infants from diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections, two leading causes of infant death, they added.