Breastfeeding

World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated from 1 to 7 August in more than 120 countries to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies around the world. Breastfeeding is the best way to provide newborns with the nutrients they need, according to the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, the event coordinator. WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding until a baby is six months old.

The week commemorates the Innocenti Declaration made by WHO and UNICEF policymakers in August 1990 to protect, promote and support breastfeeding.

The challenge

Nutrition and nurturing during the first three years are both crucial for lifelong health and well-being. In infancy, no gift is more precious than breastfeeding; yet barely one in three infants is exclusively breastfed during the first four months of life.

Faulty feeding practices begin with giving any other nourishment but breast milk before complementary feeding is nutritionally required – or with substituting entirely for breast milk, which places babies at risk of illness, even death. When complementary feeding begins, uninformed decisions can also interfere with good nutrition in terms of which foods are given, how much and how often and whether breastfeeding continues, as it should. Nutritionally inadequate or contaminated food, and starting complementary feeding too early or too late are major causes of malnutrition in infants and young children.

The response

Promoting sound feeding practices is one of the main programme areas that the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development focuses on. The Department strives to make significant investments in the protection, promotion and support of sound feeding recommendations. This includes the production of sound, evidence-based technical information, development of guidelines and counselling courses, production of appropriate indicators and maintenance of a Global Data Bank on Breastfeeding and Complementary Feeding.

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