Dr Ragbir: A breast-feeding room in every workplace

Every hospital and workplace should have a room dedicated for breast-feeding, where women can extract and refrigerate breast milk until they take it home.

More than 50 percent of all infants born in TT are at risk for childhood illnesses. Re-search has found that infants breast-fed for at least six months can result in a healthier population. This suggestion was made yesterday by Dr Rai Ragbir, North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) Primary Care Physician II, at yesterday’s laun-ch of the NWRHA’s breast feeding campaign for Health Promotion Month at the Brian Lara Promenade. The theme for this programme is ‘Breast-feeding, the best start for a healthy life.’ Ragbir said because there were many women in the workforce, they needed to get back to work after pregnancy. “We need to encourage that they maintain the breast feeding practice for the first six months,” he said.

President of the Downtown Owners and Merchants Association Gregory Aboud ex-pressed an interest in the idea of a room for breast-feeding and said it would be raised at the Committee level of DOMA. Aboud said breast-feeding will result in employees taking less time-off to care for children with illnesses. More than 50 percent of all infants born in TT are at risk for childhood illnesses. The NWHRA  said the morbidity and mortality rates associated with these illnesses can be reduced if the feeding practices of infants are changed.

Rosemary Anatol, President of The Informative Breast-feeding Service (TIBS) said human babies are meant to drink human milk. It met all the nutritional requirements for healthy growth and development. She said the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said that if every baby is exclusively breast fed then 1.5 million lives would be saved and enhanced. “Breast milk is alive, it is a living fluid which protects babies from infection and no other milk can do this”. Anatol said manufactured products are expensive, inferior and often a “dangerous substitute”.

Breast milk contains antibodies that protect the baby from bacteria and viruses, and respiratory and ear infections. It also protected the baby from illnesses later on in life including asthma, diabetes, gastrointestinal illnesses and some types of cancer. Breast milk also prevents obesity. “It offers an opportunity to communicate love at the start of a child’s life. Breast-feeding lays the foundation for a caring and trusting relationship between a mother and child.” Anatol said the goal of achieving exclusive breast-feeding for the first six months (and continued feeding into the second year and beyond after complimentary foods are introduced) has not been achieved because women are unaware of its benefits and risks of artificial feeding.

Cultural and social factors also play a part in behaviour, as well as lack of emotional support and adverse working conditions. Anatol said support from the health sector, workplaces and community is important to building confidence in breast-feeding success. Fathers also had a role to play in supporting breast-feeding. Professor Moham-med Omer, of UWI”s Department of Child Health, said in his home country of Sudan there is a 98 percent breast-feeding rate among educated women while the figure was 100 percent in rural areas. He criticised bottles as a “crime against hu-manity” and said in TT the breast-feeding rate is “miserable, very low”.

Professor Omer attri-buted the high rates of breast-feeding in his country to the fact that babies are not separated from their mothers after birth. They are placed at the mother’s breast. The NWRHA said that the number of solely breast-fed infants for one month, two months and three months has declined.