Exclusive breastfeeding: a public health priority in Africa

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Extract from the article: Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) plays an essential role in preserving the health of infants, particularly in developing countries such as those in Africa. The role of AME as a public health strategy is crucial in reducing infant mortality, promoting he

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Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) plays an essential role in preserving the health of infants, particularly in developing countries such as those in Africa. The role of AME as a public health strategy is crucial in reducing infant mortality, promoting healthy growth and preventing disease.

Every baby has access to an elixir, regardless of their family's social, cultural or financial status. Breast milk is a food that is accessible to all mothers and provides all the health and nutritional guarantees, without requiring development aid or additional expenditure for governments or families. According to specialists from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the widespread adoption of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of a baby's life would reduce neonatal and infant mortality and save 200,000 lives every year, in West Africa alone. Based on a number of scientific studies, the two UN agencies recommend that all infants should receive this unique diet.

Reducing the risk of cancer

Mother's milk is 88% water.It contains all the nutrients and antibodies necessary for the baby's health and development. According to her, if early and exclusive breastfeeding is strictly practised, it could prevent a third of respiratory infections, half of diarrhoea episodes and even prevent the risk of obesity and high blood pressure later in life.What's more, a healthy diet, accompanied by appropriate stimulation and care, is crucial to promoting the development of babies' brains during the first 1,000 days of life. Contrary to popular belief, breastfeeding also has benefits for mothers, speeding up recovery after childbirth and reducing the risk of breast and uterine cancer.

Although breastfeeding has always been a preferred method of feeding infants and young children in Africa, it is still too secret. Today, only four out of ten newborns are put to the breast within an hour of birth, and only three out of ten babies are exclusively breastfed until the age of 6 months. This is not good enough.

Very often, maternity wards are too small to accommodate several parturients at the same time, and the large number of births means that breastfeeding cannot be offered from the very first minutes of the newborn's life. The attention of midwives is focused on technical gestures and very little on the information to be passed on and applied for the baby's survival, explains Marie-Thérèse Arcens Somé, health sociologist (Burkina Faso) and author of a study on “The challenge of adopting exclusive breastfeeding in Burkina Faso”, published in February in the journal “Public health”.

As a result, young mothers return home without having received any advice on the importance of breastfeeding for their child's health and development.And without having been taught the appropriate gestures.It is even more regrettable that, as the experts point out, there is nothing “natural” about breastfeeding.It's a growing trend.

Lobbying by dairy farmers

Among the other factors hindering the integration of exclusive breastfeeding into mothers' habits, the researcher refers to certain social and cultural practices, such as the traditional rites of administering decoctions and ointments to the newborn. This custom is found in all 24 countries of West and Central Africa, and can be partly attributed to the severe acute malnutrition affecting some 4.9 million children in these regions.

Then there are the messages from milk powder producers. According to the NGO Action contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger), the latter, who have realised that Africa is a promising destination at a time when demographic forecasts predict a doubling of the population by 2050, are expressing their opinion on a market that is already worth around 71 billion dollars in 2019 (around 63 billion euros).However, all the experts have been pointing this out since the 1960s: breast-milk substitutes represent one of the main obstacles to the expansion of breastfeeding on the continent.These messages in favour of the use of powdered milk, which refer to a certain ‘modernity’, are all the more detrimental given that childbirth remains one of the most effective ways of preserving health, growth and even promoting local development.

Breastfeeding is not only a public health issue, but also an emergency for human and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa.

Awareness of the many benefits of breastfeeding is beginning to grow and, despite the aggressive marketing of dairy products, significant progress is being made. The most recent World Nutrition Report, published in May, shows that eleven countries in West and Central Africa are making progress towards the United Nations target of 50% exclusive breastfeeding by 2025.

William O.