World Breastfeeding Week

Joint statement about World Breastfeeding Week

Women should not have to choose between breastfeeding their children and their work.

World Breastfeeding Week is held in the first week of August every year. It is supported by WHO, UNICEF and many Ministries of Health and civil society partners. This year’s theme will focus on breastfeeding and work. This provides a strategic opportunity to advocate for essential maternity rights that support breastfeeding. This includes maternity leave for a minimum of 18 weeks, ideally more than 6 months, and workplace accommodations after this point. These are urgent issues for ensuring women can breastfeed as long as they wish. More than half a billion working women do not have basic maternity provisions. Many more find themselves unsupported when they go back to work.

WHO will use the week to champion best practices for workplace-related breastfeeding support, in different countries, across different contract types and sectors, and promote actions that can help ensure breastfeeding works for all women who work, wherever they work.

Breastfeeding and Child Health and Survival

Breastfeeding is one of the most effective ways to ensure child health and survival. However, contrary to WHO recommendations, fewer than half of infants under 6 months old are exclusively breastfed.

Breastmilk is the ideal food for infants. It is safe, clean and contains antibodies which help protect against many common childhood illnesses. Breastmilk provides all the energy and nutrients that the infant needs for the first months of life, and it continues to provide up to half or more of a child’s nutritional needs during the second half of the first year. It provides up to one third during the second year of life.

Breastfed children perform better on intelligence tests, are less likely to be overweight or obese and less prone to diabetes later in life. Women who breastfeed also have a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancers.

Inappropriate marketing of breast-milk substitutes continues to undermine efforts to improve breastfeeding rates and duration worldwide.

Breastfeeding Within the First Hour of Birth

WHO and UNICEF recommend that children initiate breastfeeding within the first hour of birth and be exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of life. This means no other foods or liquids are provided, including water. Infants should be breastfed on demand. That means as often as the child wants, day and night. No bottles, teats or pacifiers should be used. From the age of 6 months, children should begin eating safe and adequate complementary foods while continuing to breastfeed for up to two years of age or beyond.

WHO and World Breastfeeding Week

WHO actively promotes breastfeeding as the best source of nourishment for infants and young children, and is working to increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months up to at least 50% by 2025. UNICEF and WHO created the Global Breastfeeding Collective to rally political, legal, financial, and public support for breastfeeding. The Collective brings together implementers and donors from governments, philanthropies, international organizations, and civil society.

WHO’s Network for Global Monitoring and Support for Implementation of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, also known as NetCode, works to ensure that breast-milk substitutes are not marketed inappropriately.

Additionally, WHO provides training courses for health workers to provide skilled support to breastfeeding mothers, help them overcome problems, and monitor the growth of children.