10 Aug 2015

Sbrana Psychiatric Hospital in collaboration with the District Health Management Team, the Youth Empowerment Committee and various health facilities in Lobatse will commemorate Breastfeeding Week beginning this week.

In an interview, Athlone Hospital’s health care assistant, Ms Segametsi Radikoko, said the purpose of the commemoration would be to encourage young working mothers to breastfeed their babies.

She said the week would also seek to promote the importance of breastfeeding to the mother-child relationship. The commemoration would feature exhibitions and information dissemination sessions.

The main event, which will be held on August 13, would start with a walk from Pick & Pay to Woodhall Community Hall. Ms Radikoko said breast milk was perfect food for the baby as it protected it from many diseases, especially diarrhoea and pneumonia.

She said breastfed children were healthier as they tended to recover faster from infections such as flu and diarrhea. She added that there was minimal risk that the child could be exposed to contaminated milk when breastfeeding.

She advised working mothers to store milk for the child. “Young women should consider breast feeding and not deny their children the opportunity as it improves their wellbeing,” she said.

She added that the mother’s milk provided antibodies that formula could never provide. She said breastfeeding was a normal part of being a woman.
“Having saggy breasts is natural. It is not about the appeal breasts have to other people but the purpose they serve,” she said.

She further disclosed that children that were breastfed had been proven to be more intelligent compared to those that were not. Ms Radikoko revealed that studies had shown that breastfeeding could also reduce chances of women getting breast cancer.

She said HIV positive women with CD4 counts above 340 could breastfeed, with no additional milk supplements given, for the first six months of the baby’s life.

The HIV positive mother should also be free of infections such as Tuberculosis (TB), and should not have open wounds or sores around their breasts. ENDS