THIS week St. Lucia joins the rest of the world in celebration of World Breastfeeding Week. It is observed annually from August 1st to 7th and is a global campaign to raise awareness about the importance of breastfeed-ing. The aim is to positively influence policy-makers, employees, and families, and to encourage mothers to breast-feed their infants. The theme for this year is “Enabling Breastfeeding: Making a Difference for Working Parents.”
Breastfeeding is part of good nutrition for infants from birth to 2 years and beyond. Exclusive breastfeeding is encouraged from birth to 6 months, as breast milk provides all the nutrition a baby needs at this stage. After 6 months, mothers are encouraged to continue breastfeeding whilst gradually introducing solid foods to babies.
Support to breastfeeding mothers from partners, family, friends, and care-givers is essential to achieve successful breastfeeding. Employers, you can support breastfeeding by providing mothers time and a place to breastfeed their babies and store the breast milk. Flexible schedules to ac-commodate breastfeeding, which will reduce separation of women from their babies after maternity leave can also be considered. .
As a country with a high prevalence of NCDs, breastfeeding can be a simple act of prevention. There is evidence that breastfeeding reduces the risk of some cancers; type 2 diabetes, obesity, hypertension and cardio-vascular diseases.
I therefore encourage women to breastfeed as long as they can. Remem-ber that breast milk is the gold standard for nutrition, healthy growth, de-velopment and protection. Let’s make breastfeeding easier by making a difference for all working parents.
I thank you.