Breastfeeding is crucial to child's development, says minister

Woman breastfeeding her kid

The Federal Ministry of Health flagged off the world breastfeeding week yesterday with a call on all the states of the federation to follow suit.

Onyebuchi Chukwu, minister of health, who disclosed this on Monday in Abuja at the flag-off of the 2011 World Breastfeeding Week, said in the past, efforts at supporting breastfeeding had tended to focus on time and space, but these efforts had not yielded and would not yield the desired impact without effective communication.

"Communication is an essential part of promoting, protecting, and supporting breastfeeding. We live in the world where individuals and global communities connect across small and great distances at an instant notice through communication.

"Also, new lines of communication are being created every day, and we have the ability to use these information channels to broaden our horizons and spread breastfeeding information beyond our immediate time and place. This third dimension involves cross-generation, cross-sector, cross-gender, and cross-culture communication and encourages the sharing of knowledge and experience, thereby widening the outreach," Mr Chukwu said.

The celebration of the World Breastfeeding Week is a global strategy which is aimed at creating awareness on the need to promote, protect, and support breastfeeding. The week is celebrated in over 170 countries. The theme for this year's celebration is focused on engaging and mobilising youth and deals with communication at various levels and between various sectors.

The minister also noted that the importance of breastfeeding and breast milk in the overall development of a child could not be overemphasised.

He advised mothers to put their babies to breast within half an hour of delivery, avoid giving water, and continue to breastfeed exclusively for six months, while continuing breastfeeding for two years on demand.

He also disclosed that in spite of government efforts to ensure that babies were exclusively breastfed, many babies were still being denied this.

"The 2008 National demographic Health Survey reported a significant drop in Nigeria's exclusive breastfeeding rate from 17 per cent in 2003 to 13 per cent. The reasons range from ignorance to traditional beliefs, one of which has to do with water," he said.

"Scientific evidence shows that the child who is exclusively breastfed does not need additional water. This is because breast milk itself contains 90 per cent water. Secondly, the child's stomach is very small and when half filled with water, the child is deprived of the much needed nutrients from breast milk, and thirdly, the child's immune system is not fully developed to fight infections which emanate from giving water or other fluids from questionable sources. If we must improve our breastfeeding practice and increase our exclusive breastfeeding rate, then we must tackle the issue of water," the minister added.

Many uses of breast milk

The communication officer of UNICEF, Blessing Ejiofor, said in Ondo State that breastfeeding could lead to a 13 per cent reduction in deaths of children under five if infants were exclusively breastfed for 6 months and continued to be breastfed up to one year.

Mr Ejiofor, who was speaking for the UNICEF executive director, Anthony Lake, said no other preventive intervention is more cost effective in reducing the number of children who die before reaching their fifth birthday than breast feeding.

He said it was sad that although breastfeeding is directly linked to reducing the death toll of children under five, only 36 per cent of infants less than six months old in developing countries are exclusively breastfed.

"Breastfeeding also plays an important role in preventing stunting (low height for age), a condition that can cause irreversible physical and cognitive damage, and which is viewed as a key indicator reflecting inequities in society," he said.

"Given its critical importance, UNICEF firmly supports all efforts to accelerate comprehensive efforts to improve breastfeeding rates globally, in every country, and with a particular focus on reaching the most disadvantaged and hard to reach populations," he further said.

234next.com