World Breastfeeding Week: Step up for breastfeeding
Today, WHO and its Member States in the South-East Asia Region mark the beginning of World Breastfeeding Week, a week-long celebration to protect, promote and support breastfeeding, and to help institutionalize breastfeeding within health care systems. Exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life, followed by continued breastfeeding with appropriate complementary foods for up to 2 years and beyond, provides an infant the best start possible to life. Breast-milk is safe and clean, and provides the energy and nutrients an infant needs for the first few months of life. It continues to provide up to half or more of a child’s nutritional needs during the second half of the first year. Early initiation of breastfeeding, within one hour of birth, protects the newborn from infectious and chronic diseases, and reduces newborn mortality. It facilitates emotional bonding of mother and baby and has a positive impact on the duration of exclusive breastfeeding. In the South-East Asia Region, rates for the early initiation of breastfeeding vary, from a high of 89% to a low of 42%.
WHO continues to support countries of the Region to strengthen capacity to protect, promote and support breastfeeding, in line with the Region’s Flagship Priorities on achieving universal health coverage, preventing and controlling noncommunicable diseases, and accelerating reductions of maternal, newborn and child mortality. By 2018 approximately 54% of all infants in the Region were exclusively breastfed up to the age of 6 months, up from 47% in 2015, and above the global target of ensuring that by 2025 at least 50% of newborns are exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of life. However, between 2016–2017, just 5% of births in the Region occurred in health facilities that were implementing the WHO and UNICEF-developed Baby-friendly hospital initiative (BFHI). The BFHI aims to institutionalize breastfeeding within health care systems, with a focus on implementing the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and promoting uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact, rooming-in and kangaroo mother care, all of which significantly reduce newborn morbidity and improve survival.
WHO has identified several ways for countries of the Region to accelerate progress to protect, promote and support breastfeeding, leaving no woman, newborn or child behind. First, policy makers can implement and better enforce the Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes, which among other priorities, aims to limit promotion of breast-milk substitutes among health workers and in health care settings. Second, health and community leaders can increase awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding, with a focus on early initiation and continued on-demand breastfeeding for at least the first 2 years of life. Third, health facility administrators and health workers can better anticipate and respond to the needs of mothers and infants, for example by strengthening breastfeeding counselling in pre-conception and antenatal care programmes, and by fully implementing baby-friendly practices and integrating them into quality control standards. Fourth, health, political, community and business leaders can support implementation of family-friendly policies that enable breastfeeding, such as paid maternity leave for at least 6 months, and gender-equitable social protection.
Breastfeeding is a natural act, but it is also a learned behaviour. All mothers in the Region must be supported to initiate breastfeeding as soon as possible after birth, within the first hour after delivery, and should receive practical support to enable them to establish breastfeeding and manage common breastfeeding difficulties. Breastfeeding is a powerful tool in the Region’s ongoing efforts to manage the double burden of malnutrition, and will help reduce women’s risk of ovarian and breast cancer. It is a universal solution that gives everyone a fair start to life, and which lays the foundation for good health and survival of children and women. At the beginning of World Breastfeeding Week, WHO reiterates its commitment to support all countries of the Region to protect, promote and support breastfeeding, for a South-East Asia Region in which every newborn and child survives and thrives.