The government is implementing policies to safeguard the wellbeing of breastfeeding mothers during times of crises like droughts and floods, which have become rampant.
A nutrition and dietetics expert at the Ministry of Health Purity Kibe said that they were implementing the Breast Milk Substitution Act and its regulations, which give guidelines on food donations during crises, with emphasis being on the mother and the breastfeeding child.
Ms. Kibe explained that during crises like floods and droughts, people have been getting maize and beans as food donations, which was quite a task for the affected families to prepare since they do not have the utensils, jiko, or firewood to cook the food as they have been washed away or the people have been displaced.
“What we are now recommending is ready-made supplements or easy-to-prepare nutritious foods for the affected families,” said Ms. Kibe.
In the recent past, the government has been distributing healthy nutritious food supplements like plumpy nuts for children aged between six months and 59 months suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
She highlighted that in times of crises, mothers go through a lot of mental stress, which affects milk production, explaining that during such hard times, the Ministry of Health is now providing psychosocial support to the mothers to ensure that they are in the right state of mind to be able to produce milk and breastfeed their children.
Ms. Kibe spoke on Wednesday during a media sensitisation forum ahead of World Breastfeeding Week, running from August 1st to August 7th, 2024, with a commemoration event to be held at the Langata Women Maximum Prison.
She explained that the Breast Milk Substitutes (Regulation and Control) indicates that a health worker while conducting their normal work should inform mothers of the benefits and superiority of breastfeeding; how to initiate and sustain breastfeeding; the importance of periodic HIV/AIDS testing of parents, adherence to maternal Anti-Retroviral treatment and infant prophylaxis, early infant diagnosis, continued Anti-Retroviral treatment, and continued breastfeeding by mothers who are infected with HIV/AIDS; the value of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six month of life and continued breastfeeding with introduction of nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods for up to two years or beyond.
According to Ms. Kibe, children who are exclusively breastfed for the first six months get sick less often, have less pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses, less intestinal disease, fewer ear infections, and fewer allergies.
“Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months helps in brain development for the child, while for the mother there are advantages like lower risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes,” said Ms. Kibe.
Luara Kiige, a nutrition specialist at the UNICEF Kenya country office, said that Kenya has made a lot of progress on breastfeeding, with about 60 per cent of mothers giving their children breast milk only for the first six months.
Kiige said that, however, there were rampant gaps in early initiation of breastfeeding because there were about 89 per cent of mothers giving birth in the healthcare system, but only about 60 per cent of them are breastfeeding within the first hour of birth, which is a requirement they give because of the many value-added benefits of early initiation of children.
“The high number of teenage mothers poses a challenge for the recommended exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months because some are in a hurry to go back to school and they only breastfeed their children for one month and then go back to school,” said Kiige.
She explained that teenage mothers required a lot of antenatal support, which helps them tackle breastfeeding challenges and educates them on the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding for the child and the mother also.
By Joseph Ng’ang’a
