Arun Gupta

Gupta qualified as a paediatrician in the 1976 batch and was in private practice in Jalandhar, Punjab, for eleven years before giving it up in the early 1990s to work on the promotion and protection of breastfeeding.

He founded BPNI in 1991. The network has campaigned for national policy and legal measures to promote, protect and support breastfeeding, including the regulation of the marketing of infant formula and other breast-milk substitutes. He coordinates the South Asia arm of IBFAN, which received the Right Livelihood Award in 1998.

Gupta created IBFAN's World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi), an assessment tool now used in a large number of countries, and developed a breastfeeding-friendly hospital accreditation programme and the 'IDecide' education initiative for expectant mothers. In 2015 he established Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPi), which works on food policy and ultra-processed foods, and he convenes the Alliance Against Conflict of Interest.

He served on the Prime Minister's Council on India's Nutrition Challenges from 2010 to 2015, and was a member of the World Health Organization guideline development group on complementary feeding whose guidance was issued in 2023.

Gupta was named a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics in 2001.[2][3][4]