Celebrating World Breastfeeding Week

This August 1-7 marks the celebration of World Breastfeeding Week. The global awareness campaign, which is championed by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, focuses on the organization’s mission of promoting, protecting, and supporting the act of breastfeeding for mothers worldwide. Each year, the awareness campaign embraces a central point of focus that is adjacent to their cause.

This year’s campaign theme is “Support Breastfeeding for a Healthier Planet”, which focuses on breastfeeding as one means of achieving ecological sustainability. The campaign’s objectives include informing the public of the link between breastfeeding and climate change, cementing the idea that breastfeeding is an ecologically sound decision, engaging with the public and organizations to increase the range and impact of this discovery, and the initiation of a wave of action that ultimately benefits public and global health.

In advocating for breastfeeding as a means of reducing climate change, the organization notes that it is a renewable and natural food source, is a green food product that’s free of environmental hazards, and does not use packaging that creates waste nor pollution during manufacturing. In contrast, WABA notes that the use of artificial feeding has a significant environmental impact which overuses natural resources, harms the environment, and increases the emissions of harmful greenhouse gases.

The organization also advocates for breastfeeding as a vital aspect of global health. Per their website, increasing breastfeeding accessibility and education around the world may prevent 20,000 maternal deaths, 823,000 child deaths, and $302 billion in economic losses each year. Both the World Health Organization and UNICEF recommend that breastfeeding be initiated within an hour of birth, continued exclusively until the six month mark, and continued with supplementing til age two or beyond.

The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action have aligned their 2020 campaign objectives with the 2030 global sustainability agenda of the United Nations and The World Bank Group, which focus on sustainable development goals in 17 different target areas. These include economic, educational, and resource disparities that contribute to breastfeeding inequality.

Breastfeeding inequality, a key focus point of the WABA organization, refers to factors which may limit a mother’s ability to breastfeed her child. Some direct examples include:

• Employment which does not provide paid maternity leave and restricts access to breaks for pumping milk
• A lack of in-hospital postpartum and lactation support
• Lack of family and community support or access to advice and education

See: The Importance of Mammograms | Breast Cancer Awareness