Breastfeeding advocacy: Experts call for facilitating working women

Data says UNICEF unsuccessful in motivating women to adopt exclusive breastfeeding.

ISLAMABAD: Paediatricians and nutritionists have stressed the need to empower and support working mothers by providing them with adequate child-rearing environments at the workplace, particularly for breastfeeding.

A breastfeeding advocacy seminar was organised by the paediatrics department of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) in collaboration with Unicef and the federal health ministry on Tuesday.

The seminar, titled ‘Breastfeeding and work, Lets make it work’ commemorated world breastfeeding week and was held at Pims’ Mother and Child Hospital (MCH).

The event was attended by paediatrics, gynaecologists and lady health workers.

Speakers at the event called for stricter rules on milk formula producers and stringent action against physicians who recommend formula milk.

Dr Tabish Hazir, head of paediatrics at Pims’ Children‘s Hospital, said Pakistan had experienced 194,000 new-born deaths in 2010, the third highest number globally that year. He showed that the trend of breastfeeding alone has shown little improvement in the country, from 37.1 per cent in 2006 to 37.7 per cent in 2012-2013. On the other hand, bottle-feeding has increased from 32.1 per cent in 2006 to 41 per cent in 2013. Similarly, in 2006-7, 33.6 per cent of women fed their babies with complimentary food items, which increased to 56.6 in 2012-13.

Dr Baseer Khan Achakzai, director nutrition wing at the health ministry, suggested the launch of a one-word campaign to instill the importance of breastfeeding. He said the country ranked even lower than some regions of sub-Saharan Africa in terms of breastfeeding ratios. “Whenever a woman is going through her first pregnancy, please motivate them to breast feed her child,” he added.

Dr Syeda Batool, gynaecology head at MCH, said every woman in the country is entitled to 12 months of maternity leave, but women in the private sector are given little leverage to avail these leaves.

Stressing on the need to create breastfeeding-friendly workplaces, Batool said even Pims, where female employees exceed their male counterparts, lacked a place for mothers to care for their children. “Make the way back to work for new mothers easier by supporting [them], it is not easy being new mother and a working woman,” Batool added.

Melanie Galvin, chief of nutrition at Unicef, said of all the preventive interventions to curb child mortality, breastfeeding has proven to have the single largest impact. “It [breast feeding] is the easiest thing we can do to ensure healthy newborns, it is free and readily available,” she said.

Sharing data on global breastfeeding trends, Galvin said Unicef has remained singularly unsuccessful in motivating women to adopt exclusive breastfeeding. She said 84 per cent of surveyed mothers in Pakistan reported that they were advised by physicians to use formula milk instead of breast milk. “We need to do whatever it takes to stop the promotion of formula over breastfeeding, as it s actually against the law to promote formula,” she added.

MNCH counsellor Dr Hana Mahmood stressed LHWs to properly counsel women. “Sometimes even family members create situations where mothers cannot breastfeed easily, therefore counsellors are required to engage with other family members as well,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2015.