Breastfeeding contributes to lifetime of good health and prevents malnutrition. To emphasize the value of breastfeeding, the North West Department of Health will join the rest of the world on a week-long breastfeeding campaign starting from 01-07 August 2014 in rolling out intensive plans throughout the province aimed at encouraging, promoting, and educating mothers about the importance of breastfeeding and raise awareness on infant health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has set aside the first week of August as World Breastfeeding Week. In its bid to stepping up actions to protect, promote and support breastfeeding as a key intervention towards achieving the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDG’s), the department will, among other activities, conduct door-to-door campaigns in all the four districts of the province to educate communities on the importance of exclusive breastfeeding.

All this will be done with the intention of assessing feeding practices within communities, implementing key recommendations of the outcomes of community engagements to strengthen support for breastfeeding at community level and also to establish ongoing support and monitoring for postpartum mothers at critical stages of the child’s development.

Breastfeeding education in both antenatal and postnatal services has been found to play a vital part in breastfeeding outcomes. Exclusive breastfeeding means giving your baby only breast milk with no supplementary feeding of any type (no water, juice, animal milk, infant formula or solid foods) except for vitamins, minerals and medications prescribed by a doctor or healthcare worker when medically indicated from birth till six months.

Babies who are not exclusively breastfed have a higher risk of diarrhoea, respiratory illness, allergies and ear infections. Introducing any other foods or not giving breast milk alone in the first six months may affect the baby's wellbeing because of the missed benefits of the antibodies in breast milk that supports the baby's immune system.

The South African National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2012 showed that 17.5 percent of children fewer than 6 months of age were never breastfed, 7.4 percent were exclusively breastfed, 75.1 percent were breastfed -though not exclusively- and almost 63.5 percent of children were given semi-solid or solid food before 6 months of age.

Breastfeeding promotion and safe complementary feeding is amongst 18 priority interventions that could save 20 000 maternal and child lives. Post-breastfeeding week, the Department of Health will continue with its educational programmes on the importance of breastfeeding.