Hospitals set to get 'breastfeeding friendly' tags now

NEW DELHI: Concerned public health experts and the largest association of private hospitals have launched an initiative to certify hospitals as "breastfeeding friendly". The move comes in the wake of the latest national family health survey (

NFHS

) showing further increase in caesarean deliveries. Caesarean section delivery is associated with 46% lower prevalence of early initiation of breastfeeding.

The

Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India

(BPNI), a 30-year old organisation for protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding in India, and the Association of Healthcare Providers of India (AHPI) comprising 12,000 private hospitals, including maternity centres, have partnered to launch the

National Accreditation Centre

(

NAC

) for Breastfeeding Friendly Hospitals. The accreditation is for hospitals offering maternity services and is based on WHO's 10 steps to successful breastfeeding. The objective is to assess the hospitals on policy, programmes and practices. More than 20 hospitals have applied so far, and Bloom Healthcare in Chennai is the first to be accredited as "Breastfeeding Friendly".

"According to the latest NFHS (2019-21) only 41.8% mothers were enabled to breastfeed within an hour of birth and provide skin-to-skin contact to their babies immediately after birth. It means that 58% are not enabled. Going by approximately 24.5 million births annually, 14.2 million are deprived of the mother's milk and its benefits to the newborn and moms, violating the human rights of mother and child," BPNI said in a statement .

"If we improve the breastfeeding rates in hospitals it reduces neonatal mortality and will impact our infant mortality rate (IMR)," said AHPI director general Dr Girdhar Gyani .