This week is World Breastfeeding Week!
The theme for this year’s World Breastfeeding Week is “Breastfeeding, a winning goal for life!”. The World Health Organization (WHO) China, together with the National Health and Family Planning Commission, UNICEF and the Beijing health and family planning authorities are working together during World Breastfeeding Week to protect, promote and support breastfeeding in China – including through an event held on 1 August 2014, designed to inform the public about the necessity and the importance of breastfeeding.
Around 200 people attended the celebration event – including participants from health and family planning networks, trade unions, academic institutes, associations, as well as pregnant women and their families.
In addition to the speeches from the meeting organizers, health professionals, other partner organizations, pregnant woman and their family members actively participated in the celebration event. The discussion topics included the development of baby-friendly hospitals, the role baby-friendly communities can play, and local mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding and breastfeeding facilities in Beijing.
A health education knowledge competition was also conducted at the event, along with a poetry performance and stage play – interesting, informative and innovative ways to promote breastfeeding to the public. The stage play helped the new mothers and mothers-to-be to understand that breastfeeding is the best way to nourish babies, and to give them and their future physical, mental and intellectual development the best possible start in life. Breastfeeding is also a very cost-effective way of feeding babies, especially for families on low incomes.
In the last two years, Beijing has been working on establishment of 50 baby-friendly communities and 300 breastfeeding rooms. Breastfeeding rooms provide private space for mothers and babies, refrigerators for the storage of breast milk of working women, and provide a space for providing information to new mothers about parenting and other issues.
China has made very impressive progress in child and maternal health in recent years, for example in reducing infant and maternal mortality rates. However, many challenges remain – for example, China has a very low rate of exclusive breast-feeding. Further, while approximately 7000 baby-friendly hospitals have been established in China, not all baby-friendly hospitals continue to promote breastfeeding.
To help strengthen promotion of breastfeeding, WHO has been working together with the National Health and Family Planning Commission to develop the National Baby Friendly Hospital Reassessment Tool, which the National Health and Family Planning Commission will use to conduct reassessments of all baby-friendly hospitals.
Protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding saves more children's lives than any other single preventive intervention.
Happy World Breastfeeding Week!