Despite WHO recommendations, many COVID-19 maternal and newborn care guidelines failed to recommend skin-to-skin contact, rooming-in, and breastfeeding as the standard of care.

This paper discusses a multistage process to map an existing curriculum, analyse expected competencies, and recognize broader factors when developing a competency-focused curriculum in pre-service education that includes maternal, infant, and young child nutrition.

Interviews assessed the feasibility of improving nutrition service delivery and coverage through the primary health care system in Bangladesh, revealing the need to fill gaps in human resources and logistic gaps as well as create demand for preventive services.

Guidance documents from 33 countries on newborn care for infants whose mothers are diagnosed with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 were assessed for alignment with WHO recommendations, revealing considerable inconsistencies.

An analysis reveals that breastmilk substitutes companies are using health claims, misinformation about breastfeeding, digital marketing, and promotional tactics such as donations and services to capitalize on families’ COVID-19 fears to undermine breastfeeding and sell products.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, policy makers and practitioners must learn from mistakes made during the HIV pandemic, when breastfeeding was undermined through isolating infants from their mothers, and formula feeding resulted in more infant deaths than the disease.