Contrary to emerging evidence which has proved that HIV-positive women who breastfeed maximise their babies’ health prospects, Nigerian mothers living with the infection are still evading the exercise.
Until recently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) advised HIV-positive mothers to avoid breastfeeding if they were able to afford, prepare and store formula milk safely.
Ajayi Maimuna is a young mother in her 30’s. She became HIV positive after her first three children and it remains a puzzle to her how she contacted the disease.
Maimuna, who spoke to our correspondent at the Heart to Heart Centre,(H2H) of the Badagry General Hospital, Lagos State, said, “I was scared my son might contact the HIV virus and as a result of that, I only breastfed him for one month and three days.
Why would a mother not breastfeed her child? If our mothers had known, if they had had the opportunity of understanding the importance of appropriate infant and young child feeding and the effect on national economic development, perhaps many of us would have done better in our various fields.
The Enugu State Government has embarked on the training of health communicators on how to effectively deliver exclusive breastfeeding campaign messages to women during their annual August Meeting in the state.
The state Director of Public Health, Dr. Okechukwu Ossai, disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Enugu.
August Meeting, a community or faith-based meeting of married women, peculiar to the South East serves as a social integration, re-engineering and economic forum for women.
The Organisation’s Nutrition Specialist in its Bauchi Field Office, Ms Philomena Irene, gave the advise at a two-day media dialogue on child malnutrition in Yola on Thursday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the dialogue was organised by UNICEF in collaboration with the Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture.
Mrs Ada Ezeogu, a Nutrition Specialist with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said on Wednesday that 13 percent of death among children could be averted if mothers embark on exclusive breastfeeding.
Ezeogu made the assertion in Igbara Oke, Ondo state during a five-day workshop organised by Ondo State Ministry of Information in collaboration with UNICEF on “Production of Radio Scripts on Facts For Life’.
Kangaroo mothering”, the practice of continuous skin-to-skin contact with a newborn baby, results in healthier, more intelligent and successful offspring, a new study reveals.
A 20-year follow-up from a landmark trial found that those nurtured in the kangaroo method scored higher in IQ tests and earned 53 per cent more.
They were also found to be less likely to have behavioural problems such as aggression and display absenteeism than babies in a control group.
