Breastfeeding promotes the health of the mother and newborn and contributes to poverty reduction.
Keeping the newborn in direct skin-to-skin contact with the mother immediately after birth ensures that the infant starts receiving the mother's milk.
Jordan and the world commemorate World Breastfeeding Week, which falls on the first week of August each year. This year's theme is "Breastfeeding for a Sustainable Start in Life: Building on What Works," which focuses on tracking progress made in increasing breastfeeding practices, improving infant nutrition and health, and contributing to poverty reduction at the household level.
Breastfeeding is among the best means for preventing disease and reducing infant morbidity and mortality. It also contributes to improving mothers' health, especially in low-income households whose financial resources do not allow them to purchase infant milk formula, which may be costly for many families. In addition, breastfeeding help avoid unnecessary costs for treating illnesses that children who do not rely on their mothers' milk may face. Therefore, increasing breastfeeding prevalence and duration should be a priority for health and social policies in every society.
Breastfeeding indicators in Jordan indicate that the situation still needs to be addressed, as the results of the latest Population and Family Health Survey showed that only 24% of children under 6 months are exclusively breastfed, and only 34% of newborns were put to the breast within the first hour after birth. Moreover, about half of newborns received their first bath before 6 hours had passed since birth—practices that do not promote the immediate initiation of breastfeeding after birth.
The survey results also showed that 20% of newborns were separated from their mothers immediately after birth in public sector hospitals, while 69% were separated in private sector hospitals. This practice in health facilities represents one of the most significant obstacles to increasing newborns' reliance on their mothers' milk.
Global recommendations have affirmed a set of principles and practices calling on countries and maternal care providers to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding through the implementation of the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding, which were issued by the World Health Organization and UNICEF in 1989, reaffirmed in the Innocenti Declaration in Florence, Italy, in August 1990, and later in the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative in 1991.
The most prominent recommendations that contribute to increasing families' reliance on mother's milk in feeding their newborns are as follows: full compliance with the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes; facilitating immediate skin-to-skin contact between the mother and her newborn at birth and helping mothers initiate breastfeeding within the first hour and keeping the newborn with the mother without separation; adopting a written breastfeeding policy and communicating it to staff and parents; establishing continuous monitoring systems in health facilities and pharmacies to ban the distribution of free samples of infant formula to mothers; ensuring that health workers possess adequate knowledge and skills to support breastfeeding; discussing the importance of breastfeeding with pregnant women and their families and educating them about it; training mothers on how to breastfeed and how to maintain milk production; not giving infants any food or drink other than breast milk unless medically indicated and after consulting a physician; allowing mothers and infants to stay together and room-in 24 hours a day; guiding and encouraging mothers to breastfeed on demand and respond to the infant's hunger cues; and providing mothers with knowledge about the risks of using bottles, teats, pacifiers, and formula milk.
