Giving Compass' Take:

• The WHO's Laurence Grummer-Strawn describes the disappointing rate of early breastfeeding globally and how funders can take steps to increase it. 

• How does the narrative around breastfeeding need to change to increase the rate of early breastfeeding? 

• Learn about the benefits of breastfeeding. 

With new data showing that less than half of all mothers follow global recommendations to start breastfeeding their babies within an hour of giving birth, an official from the World Health Organization (WHO) says more funding is needed to improve training and advocacy efforts.

The WHO’s Laurence Grummer-Strawn, an expert on infant and young child feeding, pointed to a host of benefits that come from early initiation of breastfeeding, including a reduced risk of common infections.

 

What do you see as some of the challenges to improving on these rates?

Our medical institutions put in place barriers to early initiation of breastfeeding.

Many hospitals use formula as a first feed. Others provide water as a test feed, just to make sure that the baby is swallowing. This isn’t recommended, but it happens quite regularly around the world. We need to educate our healthcare professionals about why these are dangerous practices.

How do you encourage healthcare professionals to follow best practices?

We need to be putting much more resources into education around breastfeeding, training of health professionals, and more investment in counseling. Women need to receive good advice antenatally, when they’re in the hospital and after they are discharged into the community. We need to be fighting for those resources, both from global donor level of resources, but also country resources as well.

For too long we’ve talked about breastfeeding as being free. This isn’t really fair. It’s not fair to the mother to say that it’s free, because you’re expecting her to use her time, and she needs to consume more calories to support breastfeeding. It’s also not fair to our public health systems to suggest that they can get breastfeeding rates up just by saying, “Oh, mothers should breastfeed.” Supporting breastfeeding requires that we invest in the actual care of mothers, invest in changing practices in health care facilities, and invest in paid maternity leave.

Read the full interview with Laurence Grummer-Strawn about early breastfeeding by Andrew Green at News Deeply.