WUNRN
|
Only
two out of 10 women in West and |
SAN,
23 October 2009 (IRIN) - Have you checked in with your breastfeeding support
group? If you were a woman who gave birth in one of
In San
village, 380km north of the capital Bamako, dozens of mothers in 2005 formed
the “Good Mothers” group – known in the local language as Denbanyuma –to tell
new mothers about the all-milk rule; 660 mothers across the country are trained
to do the same as part of a government child survival programme adopted in
2007, according to the Health Ministry.
“Before,
women fed their newborns tea and water without knowing the consequences of this
practice,” San mothers’ group leader Aïssa Tangara Traoré told IRIN. The UN has
estimated that 300,000 babies could be saved every year in
Exclusive
breastfeeding has been proven to boost a newborn’s defences against
malnutrition and infections, yet according to the UN only 20 percent of mothers
in West Africa and
In a
2006
To date
48 maternity centres in Mali have been accredited – and 26 are in the review
process – as baby-friendly hospitals, which is a UNICEF initiative
launched in 1991 to encourage breastfeeding. One of the requirements for
accreditation is to form breastfeeding support groups.
“As
soon as the baby is washed, we ask the mother to start breastfeeding,” San
mothers’ group member Oumou Dembélé, 35 and mother of four, told IRIN. “We
visit the mothers every day until they leave the maternity ward.” She added
that one Sunday of each month, the Good Mothers group organizes a talk at the
San health centre to help convince mothers. “We still have the grandmothers who
demand their daughters give babies tea or water,” said Dembélé.
Change
Still
perspiring from childbirth at the commune five health centre in
The
centre’s midwife, Djeneba Samaké, told IRIN that at baptisms a mothers’ support
group talks about breastfeeding. She said economics helps promote
breastfeeding: mother’s milk is free. “But even the richest women here who
consider powdered milk as a status symbol and sign of progress are now choosing
to breastfeed exclusively.”
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