Pakistan is currently celebrating the ‘World Breastfeeding Week’ as a key to save children’s lives.
The week, a joint initiative of the WHO and UNICEF, aims at sensitising parents and the health community that breast milk is the ideal food for infants.
Breastfeeding is directly linked to reducing the numbers of children who die before their fifth birthday.
It is safe, gives babies the nutrients they need for healthy development and contains antibodies that help protect infants from common childhood illnesses.
The practice is particularly relevant to Pakistan, where 78 infants out of 1,000 live births die every year while under-five mortality is 94 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Significant numbers of infants continue to die from diarrhoea, pneumonia, respiratory infections and under-nutrition.
The situation in particular context of immunization, nutrition and sanitation issues is also serious and need urgent attention.
This is illustrated by only one in five children below one being immunized and 31 percent being born with low birth weight.
With a national average stunting rate at 37 percent and acute malnutrition at 13 percent, urgent action is needed, said Dan Rohrmann, UNICEF country representative for Pakistan.
A major source of killer diseases among Pakistani children is the lack of exclusive breastfeeding and the use of unhygienic bottles, formula milk and teats.
While exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life is on the rise in many countries, further improvement of breastfeeding rates is critical to improve the nutrition and the health of infants and children.
For a variety of reasons, including the lack of breastfeeding counselling, still too many mothers stop exclusive breastfeeding within a few weeks after delivery.
According to the UNICEF official, the root causes for malnutrition are not only linked to the 2010 floods but due to inappropriate infant and young child feeding practices.
This also includes the late initiation of breast feeding as well as inappropriate complementary foods and inappropriate weaning foods.
“Therefore, many of the nutrition problems would be greatly alleviated with increased exclusive breastfeeding and more knowledge around nutrition,” said Rohrmann.
If all babies and young children were breastfed exclusively for their first six months of life and then given nutritious complementary food with continued breastfeeding up to two years of age, the lives of an additional 1.5 million children under five would be saved every year.
The WHO and UNICEF intend to join their partners in calling for the benefits of breastfeeding to be broadcast beyond clinics and delivery rooms to the public at large.
Focus during the week and beyond would also be to ensure that lactating mothers are supported to exclusively breastfeed for the first six months of a child’s life, and that young people understand the importance of breastfeeding long before they become parents.
These infants can be saved through the natural protection of mother’s milk without any other supplements for up to the first six months of their lives, said a WHO official.
She referred to research that have established that initiating breastfeeding within the first hour of birth will prevent 22 percent of neonatal (under one month) deaths, while 16 percent of neonatal deaths could be avoided if all infants under one year were breastfed from day one.
Furthermore, breastfeeding is also extremely beneficial for the mother as it fosters a strong bond between mother and baby, protects her from breast cancer and contributes to natural birth spacing.
