Mozambique: UN concerned about links between drug traffickers, terrorism
Photo: O País
Mozambique’s Health Minister Nazira Abdula on Monday revealed that the proportion of mothers exclusively breastfeeding their infants is increasing.
Speaking in Maputo at the launch of World Breastfeeding Week, the Minister explained: “the breastfeeding rates in our country are improving with more than half of children being exclusively breastfed up to the age of 21 months”.
Abdula appealed to all mothers to breastfeed until at least six months. She added, “it is not acceptable that forty three per cent of children are suffering from chronic malnutrition in a country which produces so much nutritional food”.
The Minister warned: “the existence in the formal and informal markets of infant formula and other breastmilk substitutes, along with misleading advertising, has led many mothers to abandon exclusive and continued breastfeeding”.
The Chief of Operations of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Mozambique, Maryvonne Christ, said scaling-up breastfeeding worldwide can prevent 823,000 child deaths and 20,000 deaths from breast cancer every year.
Christ added that the lack of breastfeeding leads to low levels of child development and corresponds to global economic losses of about 302 billion dollars per year.
She pointed out that if all the world’s children were fed exclusively on breastmilk from birth until six months over a million children would have their lives saved and millions of others would be better off.
Mozambique’s government has extended maternity leave from sixty to ninety days to enable mother and child to spend more time together, which is central to breastfeeding. This lays a good start to life and lays the foundation for better health of both mother and baby.
The international campaign is being held under the theme “Breastfeeding: Foundation of Life”. According to the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, which coordinates the annual campaign, “in a world filled with inequality, crises and poverty, breastfeeding is the foundation of lifelong good health for babies and mothers”.
The organisers state that the campaign “focuses on how breastfeeding helps prevent malnutrition in all its forms, ensures food security even in times of crisis and breaks the cycle of poverty”.
In Norway 71 per cent of mothers breastfeed for the first six months, compared with 49 per cent in the United States and just 34 per cent in Britain.
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