State minister of Health (General Duties) Sarah Achieng Opendi has warned young women who shun breastfeeding their babies for fear of having sagging breasts.
Opendi said this on Thursday during a live tweet chat at Parliament to mark the World Breastfeeding Week. Opendi was making a case for increased funding for breastfeeding programmes.
“To the young girls who think that their breast will sag because of breastfeeding, you should remember that God created them for a purpose and that is to edify your newborn child. Please change this attitude,” Opendi said adding that breastfeeding is the foundation of life.
Minister Opendi also warned some men who struggle with babies for breast milk and advised them to look for other foods and to meats elsewhere and leave breastmilk for babies.
“Research has been done and mothers told us that fathers struggle to breast milk with their babies. This is bad. Men should leave breastmilk for babies. They should eat or drink other things,” she said.
Opendi urged mothers to ensure that their children are well fed in the first 2years which includes exclusive breastfeeding for 6months in a bid to reduce on malnutrition in this country.
Statistics from World Health Organisation (WHO) show that 36% of infants aged 0-6 months worldwide were exclusively breastfed over the period of 2007-2014. The lives of over 820,000 children could be saved every year among children under 5 years, if all children 0-23 months were optimally breastfed.
She said that Government is going to prioritize funding to facilitate district hospitals to have focal persons in the maternal health care sections.
“We need to fund the advocacy for breastfeeding so that mothers can learn the importance of this for their children. Health workers should be able to pass on the necessary information to new mothers, for effective breastfeeding,” she said.
“We need to ensure that we should not have less than 90% of women delivering at health centres. This can be best promoted by the village health teams (VHTs) and if we support the VHTs, we can go a long way in curbing malnutrition.”
She strongly recommended pumping of breast milk by the busy mothers but urged that hygiene must be maintained.
“The cow milk and baby formula is too strong for young babies and thus we wouldn’t recommend new mothers to use it. Our mothers should breastfeed exclusively for 6months before they can give them soft foods, but still continue to breastfeed for 2years,” Opendi said.
