Visit us on-line at healthphone.org Every facility providing maternity services and care for newborn infants should: Step 3 - Inform all pregnant women about the benefits and management of breastfeeding. If the hospital has an affiliated antenatal clinic or antenatal ward...breastfeeding counseling [should be] given to most pregnant women using those services...The antenatal discussion should cover the importance of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 4-6 months, the benefits of breastfeeding, and basic breastfeeding management...Pregnant women of 32 weeks or more gestation...should confirm that the benefits of breastfeeding have been discussed with them...[including] at least two of the following benefits: Nutritional, protective, bonding, health benefits to the mother...and that they have received no group education on the use of infant formula. They should be able to describe at least two of the following breastfeeding management topics: importance of rooming-in, importance of feeding on demand, how to assure enough milk, and positioning and attachment. By the time a baby is born, the new mother must be comfortable about breastfeeding, understand its benefits, and what she has to do. The third step is to have sessions with pregnant women to motivate them for breastfeeding and to remove all their doubts. -- What You Can Do General By the time a baby is born, the new mother must be comfortable about breastfeeding, understand its benefits and what she has to do. Health System Advocate for breastfeeding information and discussion opportunities to be available for all women, individually and in groups as part of all antenatal care. Talk to women about their care, and learn if they have been informed about the advantages of breastfeeding and the risks of not breastfeeding; about how they will be helped at the time of delivery, how to hold the baby and how to ensure that the baby gets plenty of milk. Make sure that they have relevant and accurate literature on these topics. Community Arrange Promotional activities to raise community awareness of the importance of breastfeeding and the support that new mothers need. National / Global Work to make breastfeeding an accepted norm in all sectors based on up-to-date evidence of the risks of artificial feeding; and an understanding that women need active support from the health service and community to enable them to breastfeed effectively. Key Points: Prenatal education should include: - The benefits of breastfeeding - The benefits of early initiation - The importance of rooming in - The importance of feeding on demand - How to assure enough milk - Proper positioning and attachment - The importance of exclusive breastfeeding - The risk of using bottles and pacifiers Prenatal education should not include formula preparation methods. - Advantages of breastfeeding - Risks of artificial feeding - Mechanisms of lactation and sucking - How to help mothers initiate and sustain breastfeeding - How to assess a breastfeeding session - How to resolve breastfeeding difficulties - Orientation and education on hospital breastfeeding policies and practices - Importance of feeding on cue - Positioning and attachment - Risks of artificial feeding and using bottles - Increase duration of breastfeeding - Babies learn to suckle more effectively - Help mothers learn to breastfeed on cue - Facilitate proper positioning during feedings with the help of a health care professional nearby - Enforce education on the risk of artificial feeding and bottle-feeding HIV Issues to Consider Breastfeeding and HIV issues to consider Step 3: Inform all pregnant women about the benefits and management of breastfeeding. Issues to consider while implementing this step in relation to feeding recommendations for children of HIV-infected mothers and for settings with high HIV prevalence. - WHO/UNAIDS recommends that pregnant women be offered VCT during antenatal care. - Where VCT services do not yet exist, this will involve additional equipment, space, reagents, and staff time. - Mothers may be HIV-infected but not know their status. They need to know their HIV status in order to make informed infant feeding choices. - Pregnant women who are HIV-positive should be counselled about the benefits and risks of locally appropriate infant feeding options so they can make informed decisions on infant feeding. - Mothers have to weigh the balance of risks: Is it safer to exclusively breastfeed for a period of time or to replacement feed, given the possibility of illness or death of a baby if not breastfed. - Counsellors must be knowledgeable about the local situation relative to what replacement feeds are locally appropriate. They should be able to help mothers assess their own situations and choose feeding options. - Counsellors need to recognize that the social stigma of being labelled as being HIV-positive or having AIDS may affect some mothers decisions on infant feeding. - Counselling should be individual and confidential. -- Health care facilities play a vital role in the establishment of breastfeeding. The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding provide a supportive pathway enabling women to achieve their breastfeeding intentions and guiding the training of healthcare workers in breastfeeding support. The Ten Steps were presented to the world in the 1989 as the WHO/UNICEF Joint Statement on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding: The special role of the Maternity Services. The Innocenti Declaration in 1990 called upon the world to fully implement the Ten Steps in all maternities by 1995. Twenty years later, more than 152 countries have Baby-friendly hospitals. They have implemented the Ten Steps, and, with the addition of relevant parts of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes they have also helped to resist the promotion of commercial infant formula to health care practitioners and the public. The Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is a global effort by UNICEF and the World Health Organization to implement practices that protect, promote and support breastfeeding. It aims to ensure that all maternities, whether free standing or in a hospital, become centers of breastfeeding support. Hospitals and maternity units set a powerful example for new mothers. The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding are the foundation of BFHI and summarize the maternity practices necessary to support breastfeeding. A maternity facility can be designated baby-friendly when it does not accept free or low-cost breastmilk substitutes, feeding bottles or teats, and has implemented these 10 specific steps to support successful breastfeeding.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 06:11:58 +0000