The Ghana Health Service (GHS) with support from the Greater Accra Regional Health Directorate and the Tema Nutritional Team have embarked on a breastfeeding awareness advocacy at the Tema main market.

The advocacy was aimed at creating awareness about the need to strictly adhere to breastfeeding measures and also encourage nursing mothers to appreciate the need for exclusive breastfeeding.

The advocacy was also used as an opportunity to interact with the market woman to know more about the challenges they faced with and how best it can be addressed.

Ms Gifty Ampah, Coordinator for Maternal Infant and Young Child Nutritional Programme of the Ghana Health Service, told the Ghana News Agency during the exercise that, the advocacy had become necessary to upscale exclusive breastfeeding, which had unfortunately been on the decline in the country.

She added that, the few children that were even fed for the period of six to 23 months were not properly fed as stipulated by the Ghana Health Service and the World Health Organization.

"As it stands now, it is only about half of our children that are put to breast milk when they are born and just about 43 per cent are breastfed exclusively for six months," she said.

She explained that, even after six months only 13 per cent of children were fed properly as outlined by the Ghana Health Service.

Ms Ampah, said, "breastfeeding fit in the gap for social care, psychological development, mental development and cognitive development".

She said mothers were faced with challenges anytime they returned to work after three months exclusive breastfeeding, hence the need to be supported.

She called on all stakeholders and policy makers to invest and support the activity in the various regions and the country at large, by providing market woman with a place where they can bring their children and breastfeed them whiles at work, so that children were not left in the house, without proper care.

Madam Abena Sebiah, one of the beneficiaries, thanked the Ghana Health Service for the great initiative.