Breastfeeding: A step up in improving IYCF
Breast milk ensures a child's right to survive, develop, participate and be protected. Promoting breastfeeding is essential, because it reduces the risk of unacceptable functional consequences due to lack of breastfeeding and it reduces child and maternal mortality.
Exclusive breastfeeding has the global potential to save millions of infants. Breastfeeding and appropriate complementary feeding are the keys to adequate nutrition and human development.
Malnutrition plays an evil role in transmitting poverty from one generation to the next. Once a child is malnourished, the health and developmental consequences are irreversible — the health consequences and costs persist throughout the life and are transferred through generations.
Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) plays a crucial role in determining the optimal growth and development of the infant.s In Bangladesh, poor infant feeding practice, along with frequent illness, restrict child growth from six months onwards. During this period, weight gains generally falter and development is hindered.
Bangladesh Government recognises the importance of proper nutrition for infant and young children. As a result the rate of exclusive breastfeeding is gradually increasing. Currently 55% Bangladeshi mothers are breastfeeding exclusively for the first six month of age.
Breast milk is naturally produced at the breast when a child is born. This milk provides important nutritional vitamins and minerals that are necessary for child development and contribute to the child's health beyond their first year of life. Children who are breastfed between 6 and 12 months receive over half of their total energy from breast milk.
Breast milk naturally forms in a mother's body, requires little preparation, is naturally sterile and is available to the child at the correct temperature.
Optimal breastfeeding is the best strategy for ensuring that the child is well-fed and benefiting from all the nutritional effects of breastfeeding. Optimal breastfeeding requires that mothers initiate breastfeeding within a half an hour to an hour of birth, give frequent and on-demand feeding (which include night feeds) and that they exclusively breastfeed the baby until it is about 6 months of age, with the option to continue breastfeeding until the baby is 2 years and beyond.
Breast milk has been shown to reduce the tendency of childhood obesity, contains antimicrobial factors and provides several bio-chemical advantages.
Additionally a breast fed child suffers less from infections, diarrhoeal disease and acute respiratory tract and ear infections. In fact, breastfeeding during diarrhoea reduces dehydration and its duration.
Research shows that a child who has been exclusively breastfed has a 25 times less chance of death from diarrhoea and 4 times reduced chance of having an acute respiratory tract infection in comparison to a child who is bottle fed.
It is important that we create awareness about the benefits of breastfeeding and that we provide messages to mothers and families with infants and young children.
An advocacy plan designed and implemented collaboratively by the government, NGOs with set objectives, audiences, format, messengers, time of delivery and action would provide the necessary support for mothers and families with infants and young children.
World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated every year from 1 to 7 August to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies around the world. It commemorates the Innocenti Declaration signed in August 1990 by government policymakers, WHO, UNICEF and other organisations to protect, promote and support breastfeeding. This year, WHO is encouraging people to "Support mums to breastfeed anytime, anywhere," as all of society has a role to play in making our communities more breastfeeding-friendly.
It is urgent and most imperative that all our efforts, policies and strategies are put together to promote and protect breastfeeding for healthy, wealthy and nutritionally well future generation.
E-mail: [email protected]
Comments