Why everyone should support breastfeeding
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) the first week of August every year is marked as World Breastfeeding Week in over 120 countries. This attention to a natural function is designed to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies all over the world. The Innocenti Declaration of 1990 promoted breastfeeding, and all signatories work to protect and support breastfeeding everywhere. Why?
Breastfeeding is proven to be the very best way for newborns to be provided with the nutrition they need for brain development and bodily growth. WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of a baby’s life, and ongoing breastfeeding to age two or more, with the addition of new foods. Breastfeeding also helps to reduce the incidence and severity of many infectious diseases, thereby lowering cases of infant mortality and sickness.
Breastfeeding is, however, also beneficial for women, because it contributes to their improved health by reducing ovarian and breast cancer, and by frequently increasing the time between pregnancies. Breastfeeding can also be acknowledged as providing social and economic benefits to the family and the nation by fostering self-sufficiency and healthier families. Lastly, breastfeeding also potentially provides mothers with a sense of satisfaction.
This year the theme for World Breastfeeding Week 2009 is “Breastfeeding – a vital emergency response. Are you ready?” This focus will highlight the need for authorities and communities to protect, promote and support breastfeeding during emergencies for better infant and young children’s survival, health and development. This will remind people that children and babies are some of the most vulnerable groups during emergencies, especially due to the risk of death from pneumonia and diarrhoea. Breast-milk substitutes should be avoided because supplies of fresh water are usually hard to come by, and mixing with bad water will endanger babies and children even further. WHO believes that as part of emergency preparedness, health authorities and clinics should have trained health workers who can help mothers establish breastfeeding and overcome difficulties breastfeeding throughout the emergency.
UNICEF, the United Nations Fund for Children, points out that this breastfeeding ideal, that they whole-heartedly share, can only be achieved by creating an appropriate cultural environment supportive of women and babies, so that women are provided the privacy, approval, and support to do it. That means that obstacles to breastfeeding within the workplace and the community must also be eliminated. All of us have a part to play in seeing that this support happens.