Philips unveils findings on barriers to breastfeeding

Nature has empowered mothers with control over the production and distribution of an extraordinarily protective substance for the health and development of their children.

This is breast milk, which protects children from infectious diseases, substantially reducing the risk of sickness and death and supports brain development.

The importance and impact of breastfeeding on child health is well documented, showing breastfeeding as an affirmative action policy for children living in high-risk environments as they disproportionately benefit from its protective properties.

Health interventions

Unlike the vast majority of health interventions, breast milk is wholly owned and operated by mothers, and all that societies need to do to unleash the protective power of breast milk is to ensure that mothers have the freedom to provide their children with breast milk, unfettered by external barriers.

The Lancet Maternal and Child Nutrition Series, 2013, estimates that more than 800,000 children’s lives could be saved globally each year if every child is breastfed according to the recommended levels.

Initiation of breastfeeding

These recommended levels are: early initiation of breastfeeding, within an hour of birth, giving only breast milk for the first six months of life and breastfeeding regularly for the first two years.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), breastfeeding gives children below the age of five years 14 times greater chance of survival. Also, they are 15 times less likely to die from pneumonia and 11 times less likely to die from diarrhoea.

The World Breastfeeding Week was first celebrated in 1992 by World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) to globally raise awareness of the importance of exclusive breastfeeding in reducing infant mortality, and Ghana, as a signatory to the United Nations Conventions on Child’s rights and health, has joined the world to set aside one week each year in the first week of the month of August, to remind the world of the commitment to breastfeeding, review progress and identify areas for improvement.

Philips Africa Innovation Hub

Following its pledge to support the UN’s Every Woman Every Child initiative, and commitment to improve the lives of 100 million women and children by 2025, particularly in areas in Africa and South and East Asia, where maternal and child mortality is high, Philips Africa Innovation Hub, supported by the research agency, Dr Monk, in October 2014, set out on an exploratory investigation to uncover the barriers to breastfeeding, faced by urban working mothers in Ghana and Kenya.

The two bodies began research activities that included desk research and consultations with international advisory groups and local experts, to better understand the barriers to breastfeeding that mothers in Africa faced, when they return to work, after, maternity leave.
Under the study, the research team spoke directly to more than 400 working mothers with children under two years of age, through personal interviews, focus groups and surveys, in the two countries.

To mark this year's World Breastfeeding Week, which is from August 1 to 7, Philips has unveiled the findings on breastfeeding barriers to mothers in urban Africa, which is intended to address issues that confront lactating mothers in their quest to exclusively breastfeed their newborn babies for the first six months.

Balancing work and motherhood

Across the board, the study established that lactating mothers knew that breastfeeding was the right thing to do. Yet the ability to balance work and motherhood in a busy African city was hard and 52 per cent of the women surveyed had to go back to work within three months, making breastfeeding or expressing difficult.

Limited early initiation of breastfeeding, unsupportive work environments, lack of access to breast milk expressing facilities and impeding beliefs were identified as some of the challenges.

Expressing breast milk

Although 69 per cent of women surveyed knew the importance of expressing breast milk if unable to breastfeed directly, the biggest barriers for new mothers wanting to express included lack of space to express comfortably, access to technology like breast pumps, cooling and sterilisation equipment and advice and coaching on the correct techniques to breastfeed enabling comfort and ease for both infant and mother.

Through its findings, the picture emerged of a deeply felt responsibility toward the health of the baby, tempered with the realities of urban African life.

Joint efforts

The study observed that a single measure would not solve all the challenges mothers faced; the uniqueness of their lives and the barriers they face need to be acknowledged to develop effective solutions.

It, therefore, established that opportunities to lower barriers to breastfeeding were expected from joint efforts by industry, government and civil society, addressing the diverse set of barriers in a united way.

It also established that strategies that contributed to women moving forward in steps along the breastfeeding continuum — from ‘no’ to ‘partial’ to ‘predominant’ to ‘exclusive’ breastfeeding — were key, as with every step they could have a significant positive impact on child survival and health.

“No mother should need to choose between earning a living, and giving her child the health benefits that only breastfeeding can provide,” states Dr Maarten van Herpen, Head of the Philips Africa Innovation Hub.

In a conference call with journalists in Ghana, he said it was important to do exclusive breastfeeding, but almost impossible for nursing mothers to do so.

He said there was the need to empower lactating mothers to adopt innovative methods if unable to breastfeed directly, and mentioned expressing breast milk and storing it at freezing temperature, and pasteurisation, which involves heating the breast milk to a particular temperature and then cooling it, in order to kill harmful bacteria.

Baby-friendly environment

He advised employers to provide baby-friendly environment for nursing mothers, stressing that the mothers needed to be connected through mobile phones, to access counselling services.

A researcher at the research agency, Dr Monk, Ms Ama van Dantzig, who also participated in the conference call, observed that lactating mothers, who were formally and informally employed, had different problems and mentioned for instance that the female porter and the market woman who was self-employed would have different problems from the nursing mother in formal employment who does not have a baby-friendly working environment, and also has a fixed time for closing.

She called for improved conditions at the day care centres and advised that mothers could use the cooling box with ice packs to store and preserve expressed breast milk.

Philips intends to utilise these findings to help countries, including Ghana and Kenya, with the healthy development of their infant population and to use its innovation heritage and baby-feeding expertise to encourage and empower women to combine work with breastfeeding.