‘Initiate breastfeeding within first day of birth’
The National Director for the Department of Children at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mrs Helena Obeng Asamoah, has called on all health facilities to ensure the initiation of breastfeeding within the first day of birth.
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She said this was because studies had established that initiating breastfeeding within 24 hours of birth was one major intervention to reducing neonatal mortality significantly.
Mrs Asamoah made the call in an interview with the Daily Graphic during the launch of the Brandon Foundation, in Accra last Saturday.
Brandon Foundation
The Brandon Foundation is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to providing neonatal health care to the public in terms of education, counselling and technical support through the provision of equipment to hospitals across the country.
Explaining why the foundation was established, the Executive Director and founder of the foundation, Mrs Stephanie Barrigah, said she was inspired to establish the foundation after she lost her first child who she intended to name Brandon.
According to her, the incident occurred shortly after she was delivered of her child prematurely, however, due to lack of a ventilator at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), she lost him.
For this reason, she was encouraged to help mothers of children who found themselves in a similar situation and also put smiles on the faces of other women.
Projects
Mrs Barrigah explained that the foundation was expecting to raise an amount of GH¢100,000 to provide neonatal equipment to some health facilities in the Greater Accra Region. She added that the project would subsequently be piloted in other regions in the country.
Some health facilities that would benefit from the neonatal equipment, she said, were the KBTH, Ridge Hospital, Achimota Hospital, Tema General Hospital and the La General Hospital.
According to her, the donation to the health facilities would be done on August 14, the day Brandon was born. She called on corporate organisations and individuals to support the project to save children’s lives.
NICUs
A gynaecology specialist at the Volta Regional Hospital, Dr Eric Makpa, noted that there was lack of neonatal equipment or Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) in most public health facilities in the country.
He said equipment such as neonatal ventilators, ancillaries and incubators for saving the lives of newborn babies during their first 28 days were very important and should be available in almost every health facility.