Observed every year in the first week of August, the goal of this celebration of World Breastfeeding Week is to inform the people of society of the numerous benefits that breastfeeding could offer a mother, as well as the baby that she is carrying in her womb.

Intervention, promotion, and support to breastfeeding is an international network recognized globally known as the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action Abbreviated as WABA. WABA hosts this event annually. It guarantees that help reaches the right individuals at the right places along the journey by collaborating with UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

Nevertheless, due to a number of obstacles, working women could not get the assistance they need to continue nursing their children. With so much work pressure, stress, family problems, and numerous other issues of the present life, mothers can quite easily reach the conclusion that nursing is not at all possible in their lives.

As for the mothers with small children they should be allowed to breast-feed their infants as long as they want to. Therefore, Breastfeeding Week seems to be an endeavor towards creating awareness of these advantages for well-being.

What is it?

One of the safest methods for preserving a child’s life is breastfeeding. Despite WHO recommendations to the contrary, fewer than half of children under six months old receive only breast milk.

For newborns, breastfeeding is the finest food. It is hygienic, safe, and contains antibodies that protect against several common pediatric infections. At birth for the first few months, the exclusive source of nutrition and energy for the baby is breast milk. It can make up for the nutrients missing in a child’s diet in the second year of growth and about half the latter half of the first year.

Children who are breastfed also have a higher IQ. They also have a lower risk of being overweight, obese, and getting diabetes. Also, breastfeeding reduces the chances of getting breast or ovarian cancer in women.

Efforts to encourage women worldwide to exclusively breastfeed their babies are at risk. They are threatened by the marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Aims of World Breastfeeding Week

• Demand that governments enact laws to support, safeguard, and encourage breastfeeding. They should also provide aid to nursing moms.
• To educate families on peer counseling’s advantages in order to assist moms in beginning, continuing, and promoting nursing.
•       To educate the community on the benefits, safety, and joy of breastfeeding.
•     To instruct and train medical professionals. They will learn to care for expecting moms and their unborn children.

Importance of World Breastfeeding Week

Promoting poverty reduction, especially within the context of targeting food insecurity, and by increasing knowledge about the health implications to both the expectant mother and baby, World Breastfeeding Week seeks to enhance breastfeeding awareness as a possible cure.

The main aim of World Breastfeeding Week is to back, protect, and sustain women’s desire to breastfeed anytime and anywhere apart from advocating better baby health. Improving breastfeeding rates to almost universal would prevent almost 700,000 fatalities annually, the majority of which involve infants under six months of age.

A mother’s and her child’s health benefits from breastfeeding. Women who breastfed had less prevalence of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, ovarian cancer as well as breast cancer. Increasing the rate of breastfeeding could prevent the 20,000 mother deaths from breast cancer each year that is being recorded. Furthermore, there are 1.450 million Australian dollars in expenses linked to not breastfeeding every day.

On the other hand, WABA is an action-oriented international network committed to promoting, supporting, and protecting breastfeeding. Another flagship event for which it is responsible is the Celebration of World Breastfeeding Week every year. Working with WHO and UNICEF, WABA ensures that aid is provided to the appropriate individuals and communities.

“Empower Parents, Enable Breastfeeding”

The previous year’s theme for World Breastfeeding Week was “Empower Parents, Enable Breastfeeding,” which was being observed annually.

“Empower parents” is the idea that it is important to provide the parents with up-to-date and relevant information and education as well as support which improves the situation and makes the mothers feel empowered while breastfeeding.

The selected slogan should resonate with the concept of diverse parents in the contemporary world. The most basic goals of this project are therefore to ensure that both parents are enabled to seek this nursing capability on the one hand as well as help them achieve this dream on the other. In 2023, WHO along with UNICEF and other partners embarked on advocacy of family-friendly policies that include breastfeeding initiatives and interventions aimed at the promotion of early provision of care and early attachment between children and their parents.

Through regulations aimed at ensuring that men take paid paternity leave of at least eighteen weeks and women take paid maternity leave of at least the same, the organizations need to ensure that the responsibilities of childcare are fairly shared. Women after giving birth should be able to breastfeed since workplaces should be friendly to both parents. Employees remain the ultimate beneficiaries of such legislation as they receive support from their employers where working women require affordable daycare services, ample nursing breaks, and clean, private areas for breastfeeding and storing breast milk.

Governments, corporations, and communities all support family empowerment. By taking away the barriers, we “enable breastfeeding”.

It is within our collective power to effect change in the breastfeeding mother support movement. It is each and every one of our duties to support, encourage, and protect breastfeeding.

Key Message

Let’s ensure breastfeeding moms receive the assistance they need in observance of World Breastfeeding Week 2024.

There are several strategies to encourage breastfeeding, such as government-sponsored maternity benefits, supporting employees at your local coffee shop who support nursing, and seeking advice from a health expert. The rights and health of expectant mothers as well as their unborn children are safeguarded by all of these measures.

Maternity leave and paid time off upon return to work are examples of rules and laws that all women need to be entitled to. There should also be certified medical professionals on hand to provide considerate breastfeeding advice.

We can all work to enhance women’s status and conditions at home, at work, and in public spaces, in addition to making sure that they feel safe breastfeeding whenever and wherever they choose.