Pretoria - The North West province will join the world in a weeklong breastfeeding campaign that kicks off on Friday, said the provincial Health Department.
“In its bid to step up actions to protect, promote and support breastfeeding as a key intervention towards achieving the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs), the department will among other activities, conduct door-to-door campaigns in all the four districts of the province to educate communities on the importance of exclusive breastfeeding,” the department said on Thursday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has set aside the first week of August (1-7) as World Breastfeeding Week.
The department said this will be done with the intention of assessing feeding practices within communities as well as to establish on-going support and monitoring for postpartum mothers at critical stages of the child’s development.
“Breastfeeding education in both antenatal and postnatal services has been found to play a vital part in breastfeeding outcomes. Exclusive breastfeeding means giving your baby only breast milk with no supplementary feeding of any type (no water, juice, animal milk, infant formula or solid foods) except for vitamins, minerals and medications prescribed by a doctor or healthcare worker when medically indicated from birth till six months,” said the department.
Babies that are not exclusively breastfed have a higher risk of diarrhoea, respiratory illness, allergies and ear infections.
The South African National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2012 showed that 17.5% of children fewer than six months of age were never breastfed, 7.4% were exclusively breastfed and 75.1% were breastfed, though not exclusively and almost 63.5% of children were given semi-solid or solid food before six months of age.
Breastfeeding promotion and safe complementary feeding is amongst 18 priority interventions that could save 20 000 maternal and child lives. - SAnews.gov.za
