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By Irine Majale
UNICEF is focusing on breastfeeding as the most effective and inexpensive way of saving a child’s life in this year’s World Breastfeeding Week. But with less than half of all children under six months benefitting from exclusive breastfeeding, strong leadership in promoting the practice is essential. “There is no other single health intervention that has such a high impact for babies and mothers as breastfeeding and which costs so little for governments,” said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Geeta Rao Gupta. “Breastfeeding is a baby’s ‘first immunization’ and the most effective and inexpensive life-saver ever.” Children who are exclusively breastfed are 14 times more likely to survive the first six months of life than non-breastfed children. Breastfeeding also supports a child’s ability to learn and helps prevent obesity and chronic diseases later in life.
Recent studies in the United States and United Kingdom point to large health care savings resulting from breastfeeding, given that breastfed children fall ill much less often than non-breastfed children. Apart from the benefits to the baby, mothers who breastfeed exclusively are less likely to become pregnant in the first six months following delivery, recover faster from giving birth, and return to their pre-pregnancy weight sooner.
Evidence shows that they experience less post-partum depression and also have a lower risk of ovarian and breast cancers later in life. Despite these well documented benefits of breastfeeding worldwide, only 39 per cent of children aged less than six months were exclusively breastfed in 2012.
In a bid to boost such low rates in the world’s most populous country, UNICEF and the National Centre for Women’s and Children’s Health in May launched a “10m2of Love” campaign to locate, register, certify and publicize breastfeeding rooms in order to raise awareness and support for breastfeeding. The campaign has established a web portal (unicef.cn/10m2) where any organization can register breastfeeding rooms for staff, patrons or customers that adhere to simple international standards. A mobile phone application to map the locations of all 10m2of Love facilities is under development
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