New Delhi:World Breastfeeding Week is organised from August 1 to 7. It is a weeklong celebration every year across the globe to encourage exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of infants.
Taking to social media X, UNICEF Sierra Leone posted, “Ahead of World Breastfeeding Week, we joined Sierra Leone’s Mohs SL at a press briefing. Breastfeeding is key to early childhood development. Despite progress in the country, exclusive breastfeeding rates have declined. Together we can close the gap & achieve a 70 percent rate by 2030.”
The WHO, on its official website said that breastfeeding is one of the most effective ways to ensure child health and survival. However, contrary to World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations, fewer than half of infants under 6 months old are exclusively breastfed, it added.
"Breast milk is the ideal food for infants. It is safe, clean and contains antibodies which help protect against many common childhood illnesses. Breast milk provides all the energy and nutrients that the infant needs for the first months of life, and it continues to provide up to half or more of a child’s nutritional needs during the second half of the first year, and up to one third during the second year of life,” WHO added.
The post further said that breastfed children perform better on intelligence tests, are less likely to be overweight or obese and less prone to diabetes later in life.
"The women who breastfeed have also reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancers. Inappropriate marketing of breast-milk substitutes continues to undermine efforts to improve breastfeeding rates and duration worldwide," it mentioned.
UNICEF Uzbekistan posted on X saying World Breastfeeding Week is held in the first week of August every year. "Ahead of WBW, UNICEF UZB, and SSV UZ organized a press conference “Closing the gap: Breastfeeding support for all," it said.
Echoing the same sentiments, National Child Development Agency, Rwanda, posted on X, “Today, NCDA, RBC Rwanda & partners briefed media practitioners on their role in promoting breastfeeding practices ahead of the world breastfeeding week starting with August. The week will run under the theme “Closing the gap: breastfeeding support for all”.
The campaign will celebrate breastfeeding mums 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 mum, WHO website states.
In 2018, a World Health Assembly resolution endorsed World Breastfeeding Week as an important health promotion strategy. With a different theme each year, it aims to promote the enabling environments that help women to breastfeed – including support in the community and the workplace, with adequate protections in government policies and laws - as well as sharing information on breastfeeding benefits and strategies, as per WHO.
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