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Breastfeeding stands as the cornerstone of early childhood nutrition and maternal health.
Breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding are essential to healthy child growth and survival.
As the world commemorated the 2024 World Breastfeeding Week on the theme: "Closing the gap: Breastfeeding support for all", it became essential to celebrate the diverse journeys of breastfeeding mothers and highlight the crucial role of families, societies, communities and health workers in ensuring every mother can breastfeed successfully.
World Breastfeeding Week is an annual celebration which is held from August 1 to 7 to raise awareness and galvanise action on themes related to breastfeeding.
It was initiated in 1991 by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF to promote exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life because health experts say it yields many health benefits, including providing critical nutrients, protection from deadly diseases, such as pneumonia, and fostering growth and development.
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, in celebrating the week during a press conference, described breast milk as a ‘superfood’ and said it provided all the nutrients and energy requirements for the first six months of life, adding that the infant food had more than just nutritional benefits.
“Having over 200 known constituents, as well as others yet to be identified, breastmilk is suited to support the slow and steady growth of humans with rapid brain development and changes to provide nutrition suitable for the baby’s needs, whether born prematurely, at term or as infants grow from month to month.
“Breastmilk is a living fluid that actively protects against infection. Additionally, it reduces the risk of allergies and conditions such as juvenile-onset diabetes in families with a history of these conditions and also programmes body systems that may assist in blood pressure regulation and reduction of obesity risk later in life.
“For the mother, breastfeeding reduces the risk of some of the aggressive forms of ovarian and breast cancers; while for the family and nation, it reduces the financial burden of taking care of sick children and contributes to improved productivity for the nation,” he said.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye touting the unmatched benefits of breastfeeding said those benefits were cross-cutting, which was why the GHS and its stakeholders always said that breastfeeding, though primarily practised by women, should be everybody’s concern.
He said communities must unite to support women to continue to give this lifesaving, productivity-increasing food to babies.
He said in 2023, the Service sought to improve breastfeeding support, particularly for working women.
“We believe that some organisations and facilities heeded this call and are making efforts to provide such spaces for their female employees. We congratulate all such institutions and pledge our support to them if they call on us.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye said the country had made some marginal improvements in its breastfeeding indicators, with the initiation of breastfeeding within the first hour moving up from 52 per cent to 58 per cent while exclusive breastfeeding increased from 52 per cent to 53.1 per cent according to the recent Ghana Demographic and Health Survey.
However, he said as a nation, we were nowhere near our target as we are aiming for over 70 per cent achievement in both indicators.
“Our collective efforts are required to move these indicators forward. As a Service, we are working hard to improve our staff competencies to provide the right information and support to all pregnant women during antenatal care and delivery as well as post-discharge support.
“Some research activities in this area have suggested some actions that the service can take and we are working hard to work on some of our challenges,” he said.
He underscored the need to start right to help harness the all-inclusive benefits of the superfood, saying that accounted for the GHS initiating a programme to that effect.
“The Ghana Health Service is still running with our ‘Start Right, Feed Right, from birth to two years’ campaign as the overarching infant feeding agenda for the country to encompass activities related to the promotion of breastfeeding and complementary feeding.
To ensure that the ‘Start Right, Feed Right’ initiative becomes successful, a child health specialist, Dr Isabella Sagoe Moses, has advised all health facilities to encourage mothers to initiate breastfeeding within the first 24 hours of birth.
To her, breastfeeding newborns within 24 hours of birth was one of the major interventions to reduce neonatal mortality significantly.
Dr Moses explained that among other benefits, breast milk given within 24 hours of birth strengthened the immune system of the newborn against most baby killer infections.
The country’s neonatal mortality as of 2018 was 21,000, which is an improvement of 32,000 in 2011.
Currently, it is estimated that approximately 30,000 newborns die yearly in Ghana, with 32 out of every 1,000 newborns dying within one month of birth every month.
Dr Moses described the situation as “very alarming and gloomy, requiring urgent attention from all stakeholders.”
She said despite WHO’s recommendation for mothers to exclusively breastfeed babies for six months, which Ghana aligned with, a variety of issues prevented mothers from following the advice.
Key among them, she noted, was misinformation, myths and misconceptions around exclusive breastfeeding, mostly influenced by cultural and social backgrounds.
“Often, we hear stories of mothers who start exclusive breastfeeding and stop along the way because their mothers, family relatives or friends claim the breast milk is not enough to satisfy the baby. But that is false,” she said.
She said the breast naturally produces ideal milk to satisfy the baby or babies at every stage of their growth and “as your baby needs more milk and nurses more, your breasts naturally respond by making more milk.”
She underscored the significance of promptly starting exclusive breastfeeding for newborns to mitigate the risk of neonatal jaundice.
She observed that despite nurses’ recommendations for mothers to immediately start exclusive breastfeeding, a considerable number of mothers delay the initiation, which could lead to future health complications for the child.
“I will want us to start with early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding because if we initiate it early, then it will be easier to follow with the exclusive breastfeeding…Support the mother to initiate breastfeeding in the labour ward.
Whether she delivered through a caesarian section or not, you can still support her to initiate.”
“So let’s try to support the mothers to initiate early and then we can all support exclusive breastfeeding…The support is so important,” she emphasised.
Dr Sagoe-Moses called for the normalisation of breastfeeding in public spaces in the country. She condemned the unwarranted public discrimination against breastfeeding mothers in public and advised women should be allowed to breastfeed freely without any discrimination.
“Mothers breastfeeding their babies in public is not a crime or taboo. But we are making it so in this country, making breastfeeding mothers restrain their hungry babies from sucking in public.
