‘Over 800,000 children die annually from inadequate breast feeding’

Not giving a newly born baby adequate breast milk in the first six months of birth has been identified as the cause of over 800,000 infant deaths every year across the world, as only 38 percent of babies are exclusively breastfed.

Oruene Finebone, chief medical officer, Department of Paediatrics, Braithwaite Memorial Specialist Hospital, disclosed this as part of activities to mark the 2015 World Breast Feeding Day in Port Harcourt.

Noting that breast milk is a baby’s first immunisation, the paediatrician pointed out that children who were exclusively breast-fed in the first six months of life were 14 times more likely to survive than those who did not have adequate breast milk within the same period.

Breast milk prevents diarrhoea and reduces the chances of such children getting leukaemia, obesity, diabetes and heart diseases that may occur later in life, just as breast feeding a baby reduces breast and ovarian cancers, haemorrhage and osteoporosis in child bearing mothers, she said.

She noted that the nation would have a healthier work force, while resources that would have been put into the health system, could be channelled into other sectors.

Finebone, who appealed for adequate maternity protection regulation, equally urged employers to give breastfeeding break to nursing mothers by providing on-site day-care centres and crèches. She also called for supportive policies that would protect inappropriate marketing of breast milk substitutes and infant formula.

This is why the Rivers State Primary Health Care Management Board is advocating for a legislation that will compel employers in the public and private sectors in the state to provide facilities that will enable breastfeeding working mothers to adequately breast feed their babies even at their places of work.

Isaac Opurum, the director, community health services, disclosed that if such facilities were provided, it would encourage working mothers to go to work with their babies, instead of leaving them at home with maids, as “such act denies such babies access to their mothers’ breast milk, thereby exposing them to avoidable sicknesses.”

Meanwhile, at an event to mark the climax of the celebration of the ‘World Breastfeeding Day’ in Port Harcourt, the state nutrition officer in the board, Joan Awotunde, reiterated that the importance of the breast milk in the total well-being of the new born cannot be over-emphasised.

She also admonished nursing mothers to take routine immunisation of their children seriously, advising them to eat good food, while also cautioning against self medication for their babies.

Over 20 babies were presented with sanitary products, among who is Stanley George Umor, a three-month-old who weighed 7 kilogrammes. The event was organised by the board in collaboration with UNICEF, and with the theme: “Breastfeeding and Work, Lets Make it Work.”