ISLAMABAD:Infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life, and thereafter should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues up to two years and beyond, Minister of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination SairaAfzalTarar stressed.
She said this at an event held on Wednesday to mark the World Breastfeeding Week (August 1-7) to raise awareness regarding the benefits of breastfeeding.She said that the realisation in the world is more elaborate today after so many studies conducted on the benefits of breastfeeding and the recent Lancet series, which stresses upon the need to improve exclusive breastfeeding in both low-income and high-income countries to promote child survival and health.
After the 69th World Health Assembly set targets to improve breastfeeding, Pakistan enacted legislation in 2002 and 2009, such as the Breastfeeding Rules formulated and endorsed by the Health Ministry. She admitted that enforcement of these ‘rules’ remains a challenge.
She said that one major challenge is the role of health care providers in prescribing and promoting the sale and use of breast milk substitutes or formula milk. At 42 per cent, formula use is at an all-time high in Pakistan, costing millions of rupees to parents who are misguided by false advertising and even unscrupulous healthcare practitioners, she informed.
UNICEF Representative Angela Kearney also present at the event said, “Pakistan has an alarmingly low rate of exclusive breastfeeding with only 38 per cent of children under than the age of six months being fed by their mothers.”
Head of Paediatrics at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences and Principal Investigator ay South Asian Infant Feeding Research Network ARI Research Cell DrTabishHazir noted that exclusive breastfeeding rates are lowest amongst educated women in the upper socioeconomic strata. “Bottle feeding rates are highest amongst working women, upper social strata, urban residents, and women seeking care with health professionals. There is a need to employ behaviour change strategies to discourage this trend by reaching out to women from all educational and social backgrounds.”
In Pakistan, where neonate and infant mortality rates are high, breastfeeding within the first hour of birth can make a vital difference for a child’s chance of survival, the speakers suggested. The longer breastfeeding is delayed, the higher the risk of death in the first month of life. Delaying breastfeeding for a few hours after birth increases the risk of dying in the first 28 days of life by 40 per cent, and delaying it by 24 hours or more doubles that risk. Babies who are not breastfed at all are 14 times more likely to die than those who are fed only breastmilk, they said.
