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05 August 2020 | Story Dr Chantell Witten | Photo Supplied
Dr Chantell Witten
Globally, World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated from 1 to 7 August annually to raise awareness and galvanise action to promote, protect, and support breastfeeding. This year’s theme, #WBW2020, will focus on the impact of infant feeding on the environment/climate change to protect the health of babies, the planet, and its people. Sadly, despite all the health and social benefits of breastfeeding, South Africa has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates globally.  Why is this?

Women in general face a very hostile social environment in South Africa, even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Almost one in two households in South Africa is female-headed, and approximately nine million children live in fatherless homes.  This puts an added burden on women, and most often mothers, to economically provide for essentials such as food, transport, and health care. Non-breastfeeding implies a reliance on other infant feeding, most often commercial and expensive. This inadvertently leads to inappropriate infant feeding, with the introduction of other foods before the age of six months.  The World Health Organisation and the National Department of Health recommends and promotes exclusive breastfeeding for all infants during the first six months of life.  In the era of lifelong antiretroviral treatment for HIV, all women can now safely breastfeed their infants. Infants younger than six months do not need anything else but breastmilk.

Breastmilk is a unique biological material that adapts to the needs of the growing infant.  Breastmilk provides nutrition, immunity, and unique nutrients to promote neurocognitive development.  However, to assist mothers in breastfeeding, we need a supportive environment at home, in our communities, and in our workplaces.  Breastfeeding mothers face an inordinate amount of pressure and negative inputs from hostile family who do not support the mother’s role to mother her child as she sees fit, or from hostile public spaces that do not cater for the breastfeeding mother, such as shopping malls and restaurants.  This saw Spur, the well-known family restaurant group, putting forward a public breastfeeding policy for their retail chain.  In order to support the return of breastfeeding mothers to the workplace, we need all workplace environments to endorse and comply with the code of good practice on pregnancy and afterbirth.  Perhaps in this time of COVID-19, more women will be working from home and will have the pleasure and privilege afforded to them to breastfeed their babies for longer.  The longer children are breastfed, the longer the health benefits and protection, even into the adult years.  Breastfeeding is associated with lower rates of obesity, lower rates of non-communicable diseases, and higher rates of cognitive development.

COVID-19 has forced us to have compassion and stand in solidarity with each other; now, more than ever, we need to stand together with breastfeeding mothers and women in general.  After all, breastfeeding is best for babies, best for our planet, and best for everyone.

 

Opinion article by Dr Chantell Witten, Division of Health Professions Education, University of the Free State

 

News Archive

Vice-Chancellor honoured with major awards
2013-05-02

02 May 2013

The University of the Free State (UFS) is proud to announce that Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector, has been awarded a number of major awards recently.

The University of California in the United States awarded him the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance. The award is made in recognition of persons who exemplify in their work the delivery of social justice, diplomacy and tolerance in the diverse local and global society.

“The committee was very impressed with the commitment that Prof Jansen has had to reconciliation and forgiveness as a way to build bridges and to find common ground. Prof Jansen is following in the steps of many of our greatest peace-time leaders and we support his efforts to bring understanding to all cultures,” said Mark Aldenderfer, chair of the awards committee and Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Art at the University of California.

Prof Jansen also received the 2013 Academia Award at the Sixth Annual Ubuntu Lecture and Dialogue Awards Ceremony of the Turquoise Harmony Institute on 4 April 2013 in Johannesburg. The Institute aims to foster relations among different faith and cultural traditions to contribute to the well-being of humanity.

According to the organisers, “outstanding individuals who made noteworthy contributions to dialogue, peace and harmony in the society,” are given recognition during the ceremony. The awards are made in a number of different categories. Prof Jansen was among the recipients who included Graca Machel and the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF). Previous winners of Turquoise Awards include Ahmed Kathrada, Chester Williams, Dr Frene Ginwala and Prof Russel Botman.

On 10 May 2013, Prof Jansen was also honoured by Kappa Delta Pi International Honour Society in Education. He was awarded membership of the Laureate Chapter of the society founded in 1911 which “is comprised of men and women who have made distinguished contributions to education, and is limited to 60 living persons”. Prof Jansen joins an exclusive membership of 293 which includes such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jean Piaget and George Washington Carver.

Also in the United States, Prof Jansen has been invited to be Messenger Lecturer for Fall 2013 at Cornell University. He will give three lectures and interact with the students and staff of Cornell at various functions.

“This is a significant honour and it will really allow members from across the university to get a deeper appreciation of the work you are doing at UFS and in South Africa more broadly,” said Prof Judith Byfield of Cornell’s Department of History and Director of Graduate Studies at the department’s Africana Studies and Research Centre.

On the local front, City Press published its inaugural 100 World Class South Africans on 28 April 2013. During a rigorous selection process, 100 of our country’s most extraordinary citizens who have achieved world-class status were chosen. Prof Jansen’s achievements procured him a place on this prestigious list in the category: Heroes and Mavericks.

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