Despite having a well-structured primary healthcare infrastructure and an impressive institutional delivery rate, at least half of the total infants ie one in two babies born in Tamil Nadu do not get the much-needed mother’s milk within an hour of their birth, according to a report released here recently online.
“It is puzzling that in a State where 99 per cent of deliveries are institutional, both public and private, initiation of breastfeeding within an hour of birth is only at 54.7 per cent. There is other disturbing data, such as that 34 per cent of births are by caesarean section.
“This is well above the WHO threshold of 15 per cent as well as the rate recorded in other states,” said former Union Health Secretary Keshwav Desiraju while commenting on the observation made in report titled “Spotlight on infant feeding in Tamil Nadu 2020 –tracking policies and programmes in support of women and children to adopt optimal feeding practices: from conception to 2 years or beyond.”
The first ever report of assessment of policy and
programmes in the State prepared by the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNi) and its State Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (SBTi) team was released by J Radhakrishnan, Principal Secretary to the TN Government recently.
As per the report, TN scored 64 out of 100 in the first assessment of the 10 parameters of policy/programmes on breastfeeding and infant and young children feeding practices.
Tamil Nadu is not doing well particularly in breastfeeding, implementation of the Infant Milk Substitutes Feeding Bottles, and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 1992, and Amendment Act 2003, and on Infant Feeding during
disasters, said the report.
Commenting on the report’s observation, Dr. Radhakrishnan said, “…Tamil Nadu is doing fairly well in most of the indicators and that with focused attention on those areas where we have some gaps, we can certainly bridge them to improve the status of IYCF practices in the State”.
The report attributed dismal breastfeeding rate to barriers such as women’s perceptions of ‘not enough milk’, breast conditions like sore nipples, engorgement and mastitis leading to use of infant formula, which is unnecessary.
All these common reasons for women to give up breastfeeding can be
overcome with proper counselling and skilled support to the women and family in the State which has a large number of women work force, it suggested.
Dr Arun Gupta from BPNi pointed out that optimal feeding includes early
breastfeeding within one hour of birth, exclusive
breastfeeding for the first six months and continued breastfeeding for two years or beyond along with adequate and appropriate complementary feeding after six months.
According to health experts, breastfeeding prevents diarrhoea, pneumonia in children and provides
long-term benefits against non-communicable diseases. It also reduces risk of breast and ovarian cancer in the mothers and protects them from diabetes.