Nursing mothers have been encouraged to strictly comply with the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding to ensure that their babies survive and develop adequately.
Dr. Phillipah Momah, Head of Family health, in the Ministry of Health made the assertion at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada during the Baby Show event in commemoration of the 2010 World Breastfeeding week celebration.
She explained that the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding were designed to help mothers to initiate breastfeeding within the first 30 minutes of delivery, and breastfeed without adding water, food or drink during the first six months of the baby's life and to continue breastfeeding with adequate nutritious complementary foods up to two years and beyond.
To this end, health facilities that have efficiently implemented these ten steps were designated baby-friendly and were recognized while several community support groups have been established.
She enumerated the benefits of breastfeeding to include improvement of both child and maternal health while promoting the bond between mother and child, saying, "breastfeeding confers strong immunity on the child and helps in intellectual capacity development" and also reduces the chances of the mother having ovarian or breast cancer.
UNICEF recently noted that the reduction of child death from 13 million in 1990 to 8.8 million in 2008 was partly due to adoption of basic health interventions such as early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding.
Dr Momah who was represented by an assistant director in the ministry, Mrs. E.O.Njoku, noted that the theme of this year's celebration is significant to Nigeria due to the decline in exclusive breastfeeding rate from 17% in 2003 to 13% in 2008 which was attributed to inadequate promotion and support of breast feeding and the effect of HIV/AIDS among others.
Earlier, the representative of UNICEF, Miss Tolulope Adeniyi said that the World Breastfeeding week serves as a reminder to Nigeria as a signatory to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals pact, particularly goals 4 and 5 which are to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health.
She said that 'Innocenti Declaration' in 1990 at the WHO/UNICEF meeting called upon countries of the world to fully implement the Ten Steps in all maternities.
The declaration affirmed that improved breastfeeding practices are a means to fulfill a child's right to the highest attainable standard of health.
She observed that one of the easiest ways to gain grounds on MDG 4 and 5 was to continue to create awareness for the need for mothers to breastfeed their children exclusively for the first six months of life or to continue to breastfeed for at least two years with appropriate complementary foods.
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