LGUs urged to promote breastfeeding for infants

A children’s rights and welfare organization has urged local government units to take an active role in promoting exclusive breastfeeding for infants during their first six months to protect them from diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia.

Save the Children Philippines, in a statement Tuesday, said the decline in breastfeeding practice in the country is partly due to the lack of skilled health workers in maternity clinics in the communities.

Lawyer Albert Muyot, chief executive officer of Save the Children Philippines, said existing laws including the Milk Code and First 1,000 Days mandate local governments and hospitals to facilitate exclusive breastfeeding for newborn babies up to six months.

He said local health and nutrition workers have a critical role to allow the infant to be breastfed in the first hour after birth and assist mothers to breastfeed exclusively in the first six months and to continue up to two years with complementary feeding.

“Local leaders should invest in health and nutrition of children by hiring adequate number of skilled health and nutrition workers to ensure mothers breastfeed immediately after birth and exclusively up to six months,” he said.

The group raised concern on the steady decline of exclusive breastfeeding in the Philippines, with 65 to 68.6 percent of mothers breastfeeding exclusively for the first two months but declining to 29 percent as babies turn five months.

The figure was reflected in the 2018 Expanded National Nutrition Survey of the Department of Science and Technology – Food and Nutrition Research Institute.

Studies have also shown that breastfeeding provides optimum benefits to both mothers and babies, including reduction of the risk of dying for infants and young children and boosting of the immune system for infants and young children living in areas with poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water.

Breastfeeding was also shown to reduce cases of respiratory tract infections, gastrointestinal infections, urinary tract infections and otitis media among babies and children, as well as reduce rates of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome within the first year of life.

Studies also showed that it decreases incidence of both insulin-dependent and noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus among children; reduce possibility of lymphoma, leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, obesity and allergic conditions in children; and reduces risks of mothers getting breast cancer, ovarian cancer and Type 2 diabetes.