Step us for breastfeeding: educate and support – WABA 2022

This year World Breastfeeding week’s theme is ‘Step us for breastfeeding: educate and support’.

The World Breastfeeding week (WABA) 2022, which takes place from the 1st of August until the 7th, focuses on strengthening the capacity of actors that have to protect, promote and support breastfeeding across different levels of society.

WABA’s aims to inform and educate governments, health systems, workplaces and communities to strengthen their capacity to provide and sustain breastfeeding-friendly environments for families in the post pandemic world.

Anwar Fazal, Chairperson at WABA, said: “World Breastfeeding week is a vibrant global movement that expands and connects the power of one with the power of many. Only by working together we can make the changes we need.”

Breastfeeding is key to sustainable development strategies post-pandemic, as it improves nutrition, ensures food security and reduces inequalities between and within countries.

The theme is aligned with the thematic area one of the WMW-SDG 2030 campaign which highlights the links between breastfeeding and good nutrition, food security and reduction of inequalities. 

The World Health Assembly (WHA) aims to increase the global rate of exclusive breastfeeding to at least 50 per cent by 2050. This policy aims to increase attention to, investment in, and action for a set of cost-effective interventions and policies that can help Member States and their partners in improving exclusive breastfeeding rates among infant younger than six months.

Exclusive breastfeeding is a cornerstone of child survival and child health because it provides essential, irreplaceable nutrition for a child’s growth and development. 

It serves as a child’s first immunisation, providing protection from respiratory infections, diarrhoeal disease, and other potentially life-threatening aliments.

Exclusive breastfeeding also has a protective effect against obesity and certain noncommunicable disease later in life.

Yet, much remains to be done to make exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life the norm for infant feeding. Globally, only 38 per cent of infants aged zero to six months are exclusively breastfed.

Recent analysis indicate that suboptimal breastfeeding practices, including non-exclusive breastfeeding, contribute to 11.6 per cent of mortality in children under five years of age.

Breastfeeding could be a powerful tool to meet the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as it can be linked to all of them.

Amal Omer-Salim, executive director at WABA, said: “By focusing on a broader context, longer timeframe and practical yet ambitious goals, we can create sustainable and engaging campaigns.”