From August 1 to August 7 the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) World Breastfeeding Week for 2020 saw numerous online events held across the world. The theme of this year’s week was “Support breastfeeding for a healthier planet”.
There are many reasons why breastfeeding is the most ecologically sound way to provide nutrition to babies prior to weaning. This is because it not only provides the best health benefits, but is also a natural mammalian process that is not reliant on air miles, farming, factory production, packaging, plastic, sterilisers, bottles or rubber teats.
All in all, this means that in addition to being the most nutritionally complete source of food for infants, breast milk is also the most sustainable and renewable.
As such, WHO and UNICEF used the annual breastfeeding awareness event to call on governments from across the world to provide enhanced access to expert breastfeeding counselling through greater investment, training and collaboration.
They also called for protection from the frequently unhelpful messages of the baby food industry. This is because although breastfeeding may be natural it can sometimes be a struggle for some new mothers to begin the process and to receive the support they need to sustain them along the breastfeeding journey, particularly when they are bombarded with confusing messages about baby food and formula milk that frequently clashes with the official WHO advice.
In fact, the UK lags behind much of the world when it comes to breastfeeding rates. For example, just 34 percent of babies in the UK are still breastfed at six months; in Sweden the rate is 62 percent. Critics of the UK’s breastfeeding support highlight inadequate health funding, poor communication and unhelpful public attitudes towards breastfeeding as the major cause of the UK’s poor figures.
WHO hopes that its message will lead all countries, including the UK, to develop better counselling, information, advice and support services for breastfeeding parents so that new mothers can breastfeed more easily and for longer. In effect, the WHO message seeks to “empower” mothers to make confident choices and avoid the kinds of actions that might be detrimental to the best possible breastfeeding experience. Examples of potentially adverse actions include giving babies unnecessary foods, liquids, or infant formula milks.
According to the National Childbirth Trust, a breastfeeding counsellor is a person who is trained to use an evidence-based approach to working with new mothers and their families in order to help them negotiate the physical and emotional challenges they face when feeding their babies.
Their work may take various forms, including lactation counsellors and peer support providers. However, in order to qualify through NCT, each one must also have breastfed their own child for at least six months.
Find out more about related topics in the My BabyManual Breastfeeding section.