Of 807 women 45 years or less who had Lippes loop IUDs inserted in 1969- 1970 at a south Calcutta clinic, 552 were interviewed at home to study post-IUD fertility in 1980-1981. 48 were excluded due to early menopause, separation or death of spouse. Pregnancy rates in the remaining 504 women were 1.2% for the 1st 24 months, 0% at 48 and 0.2% for 49-96 months for those using contraception, compared to 6.9, 7.3, and 1.6% at 12, 48 and 132 months for those not using contraception. 7.5%, 8.1% and 9.9% of the women not using contraception were not pregnant at 12, 28 and 132 months. 18.2% of these women had been sterilized, while 12.8% were using an IUD, 11.7% were using natural birth control, and 5.7% used condoms. 4.6% retained the original IUD for 11 years. There was a 1.2% failure rate among IUD acceptors during use of a re-inserted IUD. Women had fewer subsequent pregnancies if they had more children when accepting the IUD, intended to limit family size, or were older. Those with all daughters wanted more children and were less likely to use contraception. Since the overall fertility rate after marriage was 335, use of the IUD in this population was estimated to reduce fertility by 86%.

A random selection of 100 infants from the R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital, Calcutta were surveyed to determine the type of feeding, monthly weight gain and mothers' opinion of feeding. The children were from upper, middle and lower classes. At 3 months of age 36% were exclusively breast fed, 19% were fed artificially, and 45% were fed mixed diets. The mean monthly weight gains were 0.91, 0.98 and 0.90 kg for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd months for breast fed babies, and 0.74, 0.71 and 0.65 kg for formula fed and supplemented babies. When surveyed, 91.5% of upper class, 86.4% of middle and 82.1% of lower class mothers were in favor of breast feeding.