Group Wants Legislation To Promote Breastfeeding

The Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN), has urged the National Assembly  to enact laws that would promote breastfeeding, to boost nutrition indices among children.
Spokesperson of the organisation, Miss Lilian Ajah-mong, stated this recently in Abuja, in a statement made available to newsmen to commemorate the 2017 World Breastfeeding Week.
The CS-SUNN, is a coalition of the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health (PACFaH ).
Ajah-mong said that the enactment of the laws would protect mothers while practicing exclusive breastfeeding.
She noted that such legislation would clamp down on employers of labour who do not adhere to the stipulated maternity leave months for nursing mothers.
Ajah-mong called on all decision makers, partners and relevant stakeholders in the health sector to forge purposeful affiliations that would improve health interventions for Nigerians.
“According to the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2013, more than 5 million newborns in Nigeria lack essential nutrients.
“They also lack antibodies that would protect them from diseases and death as they are not being exclusively breastfed.
“We call on the National Assembly to enact laws that will protect safe medications for mothers and their infants and ensure strong regulations on marketing of breast milk substitutes or baby formulas.
“This will also enable nursing mothers in Nigeria to be entitled to the constitutional right to breastfeed and newborns the right to be breastfed anywhere, any day and at all times,” she said.
Ajah-mong stressed the need to attain the 50 per cent exclusive breastfeeding targets in the National Strategic Plan of Action on Nutrition (NSPAN) by 2018.
She added that the goal of sustainable promotion and support for optimal breastfeeding would require priority attention in terms of funding and monitoring of progress. The organisation spokesperson urged governments and other stakeholders to include a budget line for nutrition in the health system.
She also called for nutrition budgets, increase budgetary allocation, timely release of allocated funds for immediate programming and implementation of nutrition interventions.