This year’s World Breastfeeding Week celebrations aimed at the attainment of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number three is casting a wider net on breastfeeding and improving nutrition. It is against this backdrop that Kenyan Parliament seeks to ease infant feeding framework by enacting law in support of breastfeeding.
Speaking at the second edition of the Nestle Nutrition Institute Africa (NNIA) conference, Seme Member of Parliament, Dr James Nyikal who is also a member of the Health committee, echoed the need for a law to mainstream the act of breastfeeding across the country and ensure mothers in both formal and informal employment get a chance to adequately breastfeed.
“We shall proceed to enact this motion into law very soon,” said Nyikal. “The National Assembly recently passed a motion that directs the Ministry of Health to enforce the establishment of adequately equipped lactation stations in all health and non-health facilities.”
Last year, delegates called on employers to establish facilities that would support breastfeeding mothers. This recommendation is now expected to take root in a larger scale after the Parliament early this year approved the breastfeeding clause in the Health Bill 2015 that makes it mandatory for employers to provide breastfeeding bottlenecks at the workplace.
In most urban areas, only 15% of children stop breastfeeding by first year of life (as opposed to the recommended two years) according to statistics from World Health Organization. It is 2% in Nairobi. Mr Nyikal says the current practice of confining breastfeeding to toilets and restrooms ought to be a thing of the past.
“Supporting mothers to breastfeed is not a gift to the mother but to the baby and also to the country. Mothers should have places to breastfeed their children whether they are in plantations or not. And substitutes should only be substitutes when the real thing is not there. Toilets and restrooms cannot be the dining areas for our babies,” said Nyikal, adding that the economic impact of healthy children – who are well breastfed – is in line with that of “science”.
Challenges identified at the conference themed “Breastfeeding: A Key to Good Nutrition and Wellbeing”, included early marriages and single motherhood, poor social and professional support, low knowledge, myths and misconceptions, HIV and AIDS. With proper care of the mother during pregnancy and after birth – and baby put to nutrition in cases where the mum is HIV positive – a baby can survive. Many individuals are green about this, for example, thus serious champions of breastfeeding are needed.
Professor Fredrick Were, Dean Faculty of Medicine at The University of Nairobi, and a board member of the Nestlé Nutrition Institute Africa (the non-commercial arm of Nestlé) strongly believes that exclusive breastfeeding during first six months of an infant’s life is best and has created a number of initiatives to raise awareness on the importance of right nutrition in the first 1,000 days of life. Women were also urged to come together to share knowledge on nutrition, childcare and best practices in breastfeeding through breastfeeding support groups.
