Last week was the world breastfeeding week. The week is marked globally by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children Find (UNICEF) to call global attention to the importance of breastfeeding to the health of children.
Breastfeeding according to experts provides health, nutritional and emotional benefit for children and mothers. The two UN bodies called on governments across the world to invest in making skilled breastfeeding counselling available to every woman. They also advised that Health workers including midwives and nurses must be trained to deliver skilled breastfeeding counselling to others and families.
The two bodies also called for partnership and collaboration between governments and civil society organisations and health related profession associations in building strong collaborative systems for provision of appropriate counselling.
In Nigeria, there have been calls and various advocacy for parents to ensure Exclusive Breastfeeding for their children. But according to a report published by African Health Sciences, in spite strong evidences that support exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, its prevalence has been low. The culture of exclusive breastfeeding of children below 6 months is low with only 17 percent of children younger than six months exclusively breastfed in the country.
Exclusive breastfeeding which is giving only breast milk without any other liquid except drops or syrups that contain vitamins, mineral supplements or medicines has protective effect against both morbidity and mortality and superior to non-exclusive breastfeeding. It provides low cost, complete nutrition for the infants, protects them against infections and other infant related sicknesses thereby increasing birth spacing.
With Nigeria having one of the highest infant mortality rate in the world, and one if the highest record of child malnutrition in the world, exclusive breastfeeding couples with a comprehensive primary healthcare provision and the availability of healthcare professionals would help reduce the rate in the country.
Ordinarily with less than 30 percent exclusive breastfeeding in the country, Nigeria has failed to achieve a 50 percent target set for 2018 in line with the National Strategic Plan of Action on Nutrition.
There should be a national policy on exclusive breastfeeding that would ensure every nursing as expectant mother have the knowledge of the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding. The states and local governments must be carried along to ensure such policy and programme achieve its result in line with the National Strategic Plan of Action on Nutrition.
Policy makers must commit to ensuring exclusive breastfeeding is encouraged for better health of mother and child and overall reduction of child mortality occasioned by malnutrition and infant related sicknesses.
