“Sustaining Breastfeeding Together”
Set every August for the first seven days of the month, World Breastfeeding Week aims to highlight the huge benefits that breastfeeding can bring to both the health and welfare of babies, as well as a wider push for maternal health, focusing on good nutrition, poverty reduction and food security. The event is organized every year by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), a global network that aims to protect, promote and support breastfeeding around the world. Along the way, it works with the World Health Organization and Unicef to get its aid to the right people in the right communities.
Breastfeeding, also known as nursing, is the feeding of babies and young children with milk from a woman’s breast.
The debate on if a woman should breastfeed, for how long a woman should breastfeed has been long standing. While some mother’s fine joy and pride in breastfeeding their babies others due to their work schedules, religious beliefs and myths find breastfeeding demanding. Breastfeeding is an act that is beneficial to the mother and the baby. In the baby, breast milk digest easily and boosts the baby’s immune system; it has been linked to increase brain function in infants and the list goes on. Mothers who breastfeed also have their advantages some of which are: it helps burns post pregnancy fat, it is a natural method of contraception, and reduces the woman’s chances of developing ovarian cancer.
The choice to breastfeed or not depends on the individual but the benefits that come with it are inevitable.
The theme to the 2017 WBW campaign “Sustaining breastfeeding Together” was aimed at tackling this. If you’d like more information on the theme for this year’s World Breastfeeding Week keep checking in on the WHO or WBW website.
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| SEPTEMBER | |
| 12th September | World Oral Health Day
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| 28th September | Rabies Day |
| 29th September | World Heart Day |