This World Breastfeeding Week, let’s appreciate breastfeeding mums and ensure they get the support they need.
Breastfeeding support comes in many forms – from staff welcoming breastfeeding in your local café to helpful advice from a health worker or maternity protections from your government.
These all help protect the health and rights of women and babies
Mothers who brestfeed need:
- Policies and attitudes that value women and breastfeeding
- A women and breastfeeding-friendly health care system
- Respect for women’s autonomy and her right to breastfeed anytime, anywhere
- Solidarity and community support
This year we want to really recognize breastfeeding mums, ensure they are seen and heard, and share relatable human experiences about breastfeeding and the importance of multi-level support.
World Breastfeeding Week is held in the first week of August every year.
The theme for 2024 is Closing the gap: Breastfeeding support for all.
The campaign will celebrate breastfeeding mothers in all their diversity, throughout their breastfeeding journeys, while showcasing the ways families, societies, communities and health workers can have the back of every breastfeeding mother.
This World Breastfeeding Week, let’s appreciate breastfeeding mums and ensure they get the support they need.
Universal neonatal screening for eye anomalies is recommended. This should be accompanied by diagnostic and treatment services for infants in whom an abnormality is detected.
An estimated 1.14 million children aged 0-15 years are blind or have severe visual impairment due to eye conditions. The main causes of blindness are congenital and developmental cataracts, corneal scarring, congenital ocular anomalies, retinal dystrophies, glaucoma, and retinopathy of prematurity.
Conveying the right information, for the informed decision of mothers and families, is correct and ethical.
Considerable scientific evidence is available on breastfeeding and human milk feeding as a public health strategy given its myriad benefits for both newborns and breast feeders. However, breastfeeding is often perceived by some health care professionals as simply a lifestyle choice. They fear creating guilt in those who choose not to breastfeed by "pushing" for breastfeeding.
Since 1991, the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) has sought to motivate healthcare teams caring for newborns to provide the best support for successful breastfeeding, based on the Ten Steps.
Surveillance of congenital defects (CDs) consists of: case detection, data collection and submission, coding, classification, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of information. Developing surveillance systems allows countries to have their own data to assess the size of the problem, evaluate its impact from different perspectives and assess the effect of interventions.
Human milk (HM) is recognized for its safety, efficacy, availability and cost/effectiveness. Consequently, it is the best food for newborns, even if they are small, premature or sick.
Breastfeeding improves child survival, health and development.
HM has the potential to reduce morbidities and improve health, especially in those born extremely prematurely, as it contains bioactive substances with bactericidal, immunomodulatory, and gut maturation-inducing properties.
The primary responsibility for monitoring the implementation of the code rests with governments. Enforcement is most effective when this responsibility is shared among the main government agencies involved throughout the various stages of product commercialization.
- National legislation on the Code should indicate which government agencies are in charge of overseeing this and how it should be done.
- Manufacturers and vendors of human milk substitutes should monitor their own marketing practices at all levels.
Early childhood (from birth to 8 years of age) is key to achieving the maximum development of the human being. This stage comprises the most sensitive period for brain development and extends from pregnancy (during organogenesis), until 3 years after birth, when the greatest number of neural connections and circuits are formed and the maturation of the central nervous system gets completed.