Exclusive breastfeeding - Vital for infant health

Article: Salome Donkor
THE early days of life are the most vulnerable for a child. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the risk of mortality is greatest during the first days of birth, when it is estimated that between 25 per cent and 45 per cent of neonatal deaths occur.
To improve child survival and proper growth of the child, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that babies should be exclusively breastfed from birth to six months, and then continuos breastfeeding with the addition of nutritious complementary foods for up to two years or beyond. Breastfeeding is the best and ideal way to provide new-borns with the nutrients they need. In addition to being more affordable than buying enriched milk formula, breast milk contains the nutrients needed by infants for healthy growth and development and is also easier for babies to digest. It is so full of nutrients that some doctors even recommend provision of breast milk to children for several years.
To protect, promote and support breastfeeding, World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated every year from 1st to 7th August to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies. The theme for this year’s celebration is "Breastfeeding - a vital emergency response. Are you ready?” and the national theme adopted by the Ghana Infant Nutrition Action Network, the Ghana branch of the International Baby Food Action Network, is “Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies.”
The week-long celebration is expected to highlight the need to protect, promote and support breastfeeding in emergencies for infants and young child survival, health and development. The week provides the opportunity to advocate for a simple way to save children's lives.
The celebration commemorates the Innocenti Declaration made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF at a meeting of governments and policy-makers from more than 30 countries in Florence, Italy, in August 1990.
The World Summit for Children endorsed the Innocenti Declaration in September 1990, and its operational targets became part of the Summit goals for the year 2000. Together, the declaration and Plan of Action of the World Summit for Children and the Convention on the Rights of the Child constitute an ambitious but feasible agenda for the well-being of children.
The declaration sets important operational targets that enjoins nations to appoint a national breastfeeding co-ordinator of appropriate authority, and establish a multi-sectoral breastfeeding committee composed of representatives from relevant government departments, non-governmental organisations, and health professional associations.
It also commits nations to ensure that every facility providing maternity services practises all 10 steps to successful breastfeeding and enact imaginative legislation protecting the breastfeeding rights of working women and established means for its enforcement.
“Exclusive breastfeeding is one of the most powerful tools we have to combat child hunger and death,” says UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “The Innocenti Declaration created a movement that has helped to save millions of lives and brought us closer to the Millennium Development Goals,” she states.
According to Ms Veneman, “the achievements since the Innocenti Declaration should inspire us to do more to reach out to vulnerable mothers and children”. She praised the dedication of a vast international community of breastfeeding advocates, who have worked tirelessly to turn the promises of the Innocenti Declaration, and the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative, into action.
Breast milk gives a baby ideal nourishment during the critical first months of life, as well as vital immunity against killer diseases like pneumonia.
Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDGs) aims at reducing child mortality and it is estimated that almost one-fifth of all child deaths could be prevented and the lives of over two million children saved every year, through exclusive breastfeeding.
According to UNICEF, between 1990 and 2000, exclusive breastfeeding levels for children under six months in the developing world have increased by as much as three or fourfold in some countries. UNICEF, the WHO and other child survival partners hailed this progress as they commemorated 15 years of the adoption of the landmark Innocenti Declaration in 2005.
The International Baby Food Action Network, stresses that the Innocenti Declaration was revisited on its 15th anniversary and it was noted that much progress had been made with 20,000 hospitals in 150 countries designated baby friendly hospitals and more countries implementing the Code and Resolutions of the declaration.
The Co-ordinator for breastfeeding activities in the country and a member of Ghana Infant Nutrition Action Network, Mrs Esther Quaye-Kuma, told the Daily Graphic that this year’s National Breastfeeding Week would be launched in Mankesim in the Central Region.
She said the country has 287 baby-friendly accredited facilities and that maternity homes were also promoting early breastfeeding, but those facilities were yet to be accredited.
According to Mrs Quaye-Kuma, who is also the National Secretary of the Ghana Registered Midwives Association (GRMA), surveys conducted by the Ghana Health Service and the Statistical Service indicate that exclusive breastfeeding rates in the country, were 15.6 per cent in 1993, 25.3 per cent in 1998 and 46.3 per cent in 2003.
She also said the 2008 preliminary reports indicate that exclusive breastfeeding rates increased from 54 percent the previous year to 63 percent that year.
She said breastfeeding in the first day of life, contributes significantly to improving the nutritional status of children in the first two years of life, prevent malnutrition and stunt growth, which usually have their origins in early age in life.
She said breastfeeding in particular is important not just for the duration of any emergency but have a life-long impact on a child’s life and on a woman’s future feeding decisions, stressing that breastfeeding in the first day is associated with sufficient flow of breast milk and enhances longer breastfeeding.
Global breastfeeding rates have risen, but Innocenti partners warned that lack of awareness amongst mothers, and lack of support from health workers and communities, as well as the growing number of emergencies and the continued rise of HIV/AIDS also endangers the lives of mothers and children.
The new Innocenti report published by UNICEF, WHO and other infant-feeding specialists, calls for greater government action and investment to protect exclusive breastfeeding. It also emphasises the need to support women in providing the best nourishment for their children.
Women should be encouraged to overcome all obstacles to breastfeeding including, social-cultural and economic barriers within the health system, the workplace and the community and this requires sensitivity, continued vigilance, and a responsive and comprehensive communications strategy.
Such empowerment involves the removal of constraints and influences that manipulate perceptions and behaviour towards breastfeeding, often by subtle and indirect means.
All infants should be fed exclusively on breastmilk from birth to 4-6 months of age.The governments also urgently needs to make mainstream the latest strategies for HIV positive mothers and infant-feeding into national policies.
We should be guided by the advise by the UNICEF Executive Director that “In times of crisis, the right feeding practices for children are the key to saving lives.”