World Breastfeeding
Week
01- 07 August
2022
The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life, followed by continued breastfeeding with appropriate complementary foods for up to 2 years and beyond. WHO also recommends early and uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact, rooming-in and kangaroo mother care which significantly improve neonatal survival and reduce morbidity.
All mothers should 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 initiate and establish breastfeeding and manage common breastfeeding difficulties.
The World Breastfeeding Week is being celebrated during the first week of August every year. This year the week is celebrated with the theme ‘Step up for Breastfeeding; Educate and Support’. The week is an opportunity to strengthen the capacity of all stakeholders’ actions on protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding across different levels of society.
WHO continues to raise awareness, educate, and empower the capacities of stakeholders to establish and sustain breastfeeding-friendly environments for families globally as well as locally emphasizing the importance of adopting the “whole of society and whole of government” approach with involvement of governments, workplaces and communities. . These efforts are also vital in Sri Lankan setting at present considering the current crisis situation which needs extra efforts to reaffirm breastfeeding as part of nutrition and food security.
During the pandemic period, WHO Sri Lanka has been supporting the Ministry of Health through technical guidance and support in developing guidelines on continuing breastfeeding and on sustaining essential child nutrition services. WHO also provided information and communication infrastructure support to national level and district level Maternal and Child Health (MCH) cells to continue national-provincial communication and ensured staff capacity building and continuous monitoring of MCH programme including a child nutrition programme. This support has reached all MCH cells in 26 health districts and has provided the much-needed national- provincial coordination and dialogue both during the COVID-19 pandemic and now during the current travel limitation due to fuel shortages.
As next steps WHO Sri Lanka will continue to work closely with Ministry of Health, stakeholders and community-based organizations to empower working women in selected work settings on the importance of breastfeeding and inform about their rights and legal provisions available to ensure their babies are breastfed optimally in this crisis situation.