With the launch of the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) by UNICEF and WHO a new Ten Steps guidance have been revised to help motivate facilities providing maternity and newborn services globally for the implementation of successful breastfeeding.
The UN agency for health is calling on all facilities providing maternity and newborn services to apply these 2018 revised guidance.
The implementation guidance for BFHI emphasizes strategies to scale up to universal coverage and ensure sustainability over time. The guidance focuses on integrating the programme more fully in the health-care system of countries.
On the critical management procedures, WHO is asking countries to fully comply with the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and relevant World Health Assembly resolutions and to ensure that staff have sufficient knowledge, competence and skills to support breastfeeding.
In addition to that, they want a written infant feeding policy that is routinely communicated to staff and parents. And, to also establish ongoing monitoring and data-management systems.
According to the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) status report titled, Marketing of Breast-Milk substitutes: – 2016, it reveals the status of national laws to protect and promote breastfeeding.
Of the 194 countries analysed in the report, 135 have in place some form of legal measure related to the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes and subsequent resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly. Only 39 countries have laws that enact all provisions of the code.
Mariama Ellie, at the Directorate of Food and Nutrition at the Ministry of Health, said that the Code is different from the breastfeeding policy, and that they currently have a draft copy of the policy but it is yet to be finalized and validated.
With the Code, she said, they have to start the process all over again as the Members of Parliament they were working with are no longer in the House, so they will have to familiarize the new MPs and the Minister on it thereby bringing them up to speed.
According to the national Nutrition survey 2017, exclusive breastfeeding is ranked at 61.6% and early initiation, which is between one hour after birth is 56.8%.
The Code calls on countries to protect breastfeeding as well as eating other safe and nutritionally adequate foods until two years of age or beyond. In that context WHO Member States have committed to increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of life to at least 50% by 2025 as one of a set of global nutrition targets code was develop.
Nutritionist, Nancy Javombo, at the Ola During Hospital insists there is no question that breastfeeding is the optimal choice for infant nutrition. “We promote and support breastfeeding through regular counseling with breast-feeding educational materials, and the dialogue we have the mothers, will help in sustaining the exclusive campaign.”
The key clinical practices deals with the discussion on the importance and management of breastfeeding with pregnant women and their families. Facilitate immediate and uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact and support mothers to initiate breastfeeding as soon as possible after birth.
It also includes support mothers to initiate and maintain breastfeeding and manage common difficulties, enable mothers and their infants to remain together and to practise rooming-in 24-hours a day, support mothers to recognize and respond to their infants’ cues for feeding, counsel mothers on the use and risks of feeding bottles, teats and pacifiers and coordinate discharge so that parents and their infants have timely access to ongoing support and care.
And, it warns that newborns should not be provided with any food or fluids other than breastmilk unless medically indicated.
WHO says that there is substantial evidence that implementing the Ten Steps significantly improves breastfeeding rates and that a systematic review in 2016 demonstrated clearly that adherence impacts early initiation of breastfeeding immediately after birth, exclusive breastfeeding and total duration of breastfeeding.
ZJ/16/4/18
By Zainab Iyamide Joaque
Wednesday April 18, 2018.
ADVERTISEMENT