This paper describes a rapid assessment of current infant feeding practices conducted during a mass immunization campaign in an urban area of São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo State, Brazil. Parents or guardians of all infants (<1 year) attending the 8 randomly-selected health centers were interviewed. Median duration of breastfeeding practices was estimated by probit analysis. Of the 719 infants, 692 (96.2%) began breastfeeding, and only 63 (8.9%) were in exclusive breastfeeding. Median duration of total breastfeeding (exclusive plus partial) was 205.93 days. Infants born by cesarean section showed a higher risk of early weaning: OR (95%CI)=1.51 (1.09-2.09) after adjusting for confounding variables (mother's educational level, gestational age, birth weight, whether breastfed). Median duration of total breastfeeding was higher among infants born by vaginal delivery (227.38 days; 95%CI=195.19-271.16) as compared to cesarean section (192.84 days; 95%CI=128.23-273.34). Early introduction of weaning foods such as water/herbal tea and cow's milk was observed with a median age at introduction of 30 days. These findings indicate the need to improve strategies by the public health services to promote exclusive breastfeeding.

The aim of the present study was to analyze the concordance between clinical and autopsy diagnoses. For this purpose, 100 patients submitted to autopsy from July 2000 to April 2001 were studied prospectively. In all cases, clinicians gave the immediate and the underlying causes of death for patients dying under their care. The diagnoses were compared to the macroscopic autopsy diagnoses. Cohen's kappa coefficient of agreement was estimated. Sixty-four men and 36 women were submitted to autopsy. The most frequent pathological diagnosis of underlying cause of death were diseases of the circulatory system (35%), infections and parasitic diseases (20%) and diseases of the digestive system (11%). The kappa coefficient for immediate cause of death was 0.40 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.29-0.50); for underlying cause it was 0.38 (95%CI: 0.18-0.44), and for basic cause codified by group according to ICD-10 it was 0.55 (95%CI: 0.44-0.67). Major disagreement occurred in 10 cases involving pathological causes of death as circulatory diseases, in which the clinicians diagnosed a digestive system disease as the cause of death (n = 5), or infectious and parasitic diseases (n = 5). The present study shows that agreement between clinical and pathological causes of death are moderate, proving that the autopsy is still a very important procedure.