[Maternal lactation and birth spacing: importance of obtaining information in public health policy].

The presence of lactational amenorrhoea cannot be fully relied upon to protect the individual mother against becoming pregnant. Nevertheless, the use of breast-feeding as a birth-spacing mechanism has important implications for global health policy. This article identifies the information that should be collected and examined as a basis for developing guidelines on how to reduce the dual protection afforded by post-partum lactational amenorrhoea and other family planning methods, and discusses when such methods should be introduced.