KUWAIT: The Food and Nutrition Public Authority announced the launch of its celebration of World Breastfeeding Week on Sunday under the slogan ‘Empowering breastfeeding: Making a difference for working parents’. The week’s activities will continue until Nov 9. The coordinator of the program at the Authority Dr Mona Al-Sumaie said in a press statement that the celebration focuses on the importance of breastfeeding and seeks to promote maternal and infant nutrition. She explained that the program aims to demonstrate the impact of paid maternity leave, support the workplace and provide a breastfeeding-friendly environment and laws.

She added that the program also aims to demonstrate the impact of ministerial decisions regarding the protection of breastfeeding and the implementation of the Kuwaiti code to regulate the marketing of breast-milk substitutes.

Al-Sumaie said that the program seeks to encourage, support and protect breastfeeding by empowering mothers and their families, from starting breastfeeding immediately after birth and continuing with exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of the newborn’s life. The results of the nutritional surveillance program in the State of Kuwait for the year 2021 show an increase in Kuwaiti mothers’ demand for breastfeeding as the breastfeeding rate reached 93 percent.

She stated that the rate of breastfeeding practiced exclusively with mother’s milk in the first six months of the newborn’s life reached 13 percent among Kuwaiti women, an increase of up to three percent compared to what it was in 2020.

She said that the Authority is linking this program with the project to combat childhood obesity, because breastfeeding has a major role to prevent child obesity as proven by studies and research in the field of obesity prevention. She stressed that breastfeeding is considered one of the best investments in the health of children and mothers, and that the cost of not breastfeeding has major health and material impacts on the individual, family and societal levels. — KUNA