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"Breastfeeding: Learning for life" - World Breastfeeding Week in the autumn of 1999

15/1999, 30.09.1999

The National Committee for the Promotion of Breastfeeding in BgVV supports the International Breastfeeding Week

Every year the World Alliance for Breastfeeding (WABA) proclaims an International Breastfeeding Week in order to attract the attention of the public at large to the importance of the value of breastfeeding. This year the World Breastfeeding Week from 28 September to 4 October is under the motto "Breastfeeding: Learning for life". The National Committee for the Promotion of Breastfeeding, which was established in 1994 and attached to BgVV in 1999, has given its opinion on the subject of the World Breastfeeding Week:

Some people might be surprised by the fact that for something as natural as breastfeeding, there are still things to be learned. Society should view the breastfeeding and not the bottle-feeding of infants as the norm. This message must be put across at a very early stage: to toddlers playing with dolls or pupils learning about nutrition or sexuality and partnership. Pregnant women should be advised about breastfeeding. Young mothers need competent advice on the many minor and major problems associated with breastfeeding particularly in the first few days and weeks after being discharged from the maternity hospital.

The National Breastfeeding Committee supports the concerns of the World Breastfeeding Week. From a very young age, even when children are playing, it should be clear that:

  • babies drink their mother's milk
  • that milk is the best possible food for the infant, the composition of which can only be approximately imitated, and
  • that human milk also offers protection against infection in industrialised countries, shapes the immune system of the body in a special way and, by extension, exerts a lifelong influence on the health of breastfed children.

Most mothers can breastfeed and many women succeed in combining breastfeeding and a job. All the same, they need a "breastfeeding-friendly" atmosphere around them. Breastfeeding women are granted special protection by the legislator in the world of work and have a statutory right to help after giving birth and whilst breastfeeding.

More than 90% of all women wish to breastfeed and do so. If we examine the reasons why some women exclusively breastfeed for the recommended four to six months and others don't, the signs are that help at the commencement of breastfeeding in the maternity clinic and during the first weeks at home are the decisive factors. Women, today, do not experience "learning for life", the motto of the World Breastfeeding Week, during their own childhood because their mothers were not aware or had not been made aware of the major advantages of breastfeeding.

The Breastfeeding Committee is endeavouring to attract attention to breastfeeding and to raise awareness of this subject. For that reason it has formulated breastfeeding recommendations and recommendations for the promotion of breastfeeding in hospitals. It provides free inserts for the maternity log book and for the early detection examination record for children which provide scientifically backed information and which aim to avoid or solve breastfeeding problems.

It will also express an opinion in future about specific issues to do with breastfeeding and to present itself as a partner in dialogue at the 19th German Congress for Perinatal Medicine on Berlin on 2 December 1999.

The breastfeeding recommendations of the National Breastfeeding Committee are available free of charge from:

Nationalen Stillkommission

Geschäftsstelle BgVV
Thielallee 88-92
14195 Berlin
Fax 030/8412 3715
E-Mail: stillkommission@bgvv.de

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