United Nations Radio

Mother breastfeeding her baby

PRES: UNICEF will kick off World Breastfeeding Week with a focus on breast feeding as a vital emergency response. Countries can prepare ahead of time to help women in these conflict situations feed their babies and protect them from infections, says Christiane Rudert, UNICEF infant feeding specialist, to our colleague Jocelyne Sambira.

RUDERT: What often happens in an emergency is that children are even more vulnerable to diarrhea and other illnesses. They are displaced. They have often very poor sanitation and hygiene. And as we know often there is a high mortality from diarrhea and other illnesses. So breastfeeding is crucial then to protect children from this excess mortality that happens in emergencies. And also we know that in many emergencies, large donations of breast milk substitutes come in and these are often unnecessary and they are actually quite harmful and risky for children. Because then they are mixed with the dirty water, there may not be sufficient quantities, and then children become malnourished and they get diarrhea. So that is the theme for this year's World Breastfeeding Week - breastfeeding and emergencies.

SAMBIRA: Do you feel women are responding well to this?

RUDERT: Sometimes the emergencies actually catalyze action. A country may not have had a very good comprehensive program, or a communication strategy, or policy. And sometimes we see that the emergency response actually catalyzes action and then the result may often be very good. Sri Lanka is a good example. Where they did not really have a good policy and programme everywhere in place, but then with the emergency, the tsunami, they actually used that opportunity to mobilize more action for breastfeeding and the results were good. They have very high rates now in that country. And there are various other examples. I think Madagascar, which has frequent emergencies, is another example. And Indonesia also established good systems as a response to the tsunami, good systems and programmes for community actions for breastfeeding. And the results have been very good.

SAMBIRA: Which parts of the world rank highest in breastfeeding and which are the lowest?

RUDERT: The country that in fact has the highest rate and it's because it is a very strong culture, it's a very strong tradition is in fact Rwanda. And in Rwanda, the breastfeeding rate is 88 percent. Other countries which have high rates, are also in that region in East Africa, Zambia, Malawi is improving dramatically, Uganda has sustained high rates. In Ghana also the rates have gone up substantially, it's now almost 60 percent. So in fact countries in various parts of the world have shown that they are able to increase rates from a very low rate of maybe less than 10 percent of exclusive breastfeeding and within about 15 years have managed to increase to about 50-60 percent. Some countries have done this through having a comprehensive and sustained approach to promoting and supporting breastfeeding and in others they have been able to maintain high rates again by having good programmes and by fostering and supporting a traditional culture that breastfeeds exclusively like in Rwanda as I mentioned.

SAMBIRA: In Nigeria, there was talk of low levels of breastfeeding compared to other parts of Africa, is this true and why?

RUDERT: In Nigeria it is not so much that it is low levels of breastfeeding as such. Most women do breastfeed but they don't breastfeed exclusively. And again the evidence shows that exclusive breastfeeding is just the best way to avoid infections. It has much better rates of survival, then mixing for example water or other foods with the breast milk. If you mix water and give water as well with breast milk, the water may be contaminated and then the child may get diarrhea and likewise if you give foods together with breast milk in the first 6 months, those foods will reduce the amount of breast milk that the child gets and those foods are not as nutritious often as the breast milk. There maybe for example, a maize porridge given and that is not as nutritious and not the appropriate kind of food for a very small infant. So, the problem in Nigeria is that there is a lot of mixed feeding going on.

SAMBIRA: That was Christiane Rudert, Infant Feeding Specialist on World Breastfeeding Week. I am Jocelyne Sambira for UN Radio.

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