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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

UFS in forefront with ASGI-SA initiative
2006-05-10

At the conceptualisation colloquium and stakeholder dialogue were from the left Dr Aldo Stroebel (senior researcher at the UFS Research Development Directorate), Dr Edith Vries (acting Chief Executive Officer of the Independent Development Trust) and Prof Frans Swanepoel (Director: UFS Research Development Directorate).

UFS in forefront with ASGI-SA initiative

Two staff members of the University of the Free State (UFS) have been appointed as members of the advisory board of the national programme for the creation of small enterprises and jobs in the second economy.  This programme forms part of government’s Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGI-SA).

Prof Frans Swanepoel, Director of the UFS Research Development Directorate and Dr Aldo Stroebel, senior researcher at the UFS Research Development Directorate, are working with a team of experts from the UFS on a draft implementation strategy for the national programme.  Both Prof Swanepoel and Dr Stroebel are also associated to the UFS Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.
 
“The strategy is being developed in collaboration with institutions like the Independent Development Trust, the Department of Agriculture, the National Development Agency and the Department of Trade and Industry,” says Prof  Swanepoel.  

The other team members of the UFS are Prof Basie Wessels, Director of the  Mangaung-University Community Partnership Programme (MUCPP) and Mr  Benedict Mokoena, project manager at the MUCPP.

Dr Stroebel was also member of the organising committee of a conceptualisation colloquium and stakeholder dialogue that was recently presented in Johannesburg.  The conference was attended by more than 400 delegates from government departments, higher-education institutions and civil society, including Dr Kobus Laubscher, member of the UFS Council.

The conference was facilitated by Ms Vuyo Mahlati, previously from the WK Kellogg Foundation’s Africa programme and opened by Ms Thoko Didiza, Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs.   

“The colloquium formed the basis of an induction workshop during which a group of 150 individuals (50 teams of three) from all nine provinces, identified to initiate the implementation of the national programme, was trained and orientated towards an induction manual in collaboration with Hand-in-Hand, an Indian counterpart,” says Prof Swanepoel.

Dr Stroebel and Mr Benedict Mokoena formed part of the team to conceptualise and finalise this training manual.  The induction training includes a case study of a successful community self-help partnership model, namely the MUCPP at the UFS. Prof Wessels and Mr Mokoena are both playing a leading role in the further development of subsequent training initiatives throughout South Africa, in partnership with the relevant provincial departments.

“The involvement of the UFS in the programme is a compliment to us.  It reflects the value government sees in the use of academics and experts in the management of the ASGI-SA initiative.  It is also an indication of one of the aims of the UFS to play a role in South Africa and Africa and in the transformation and change that is taking place in our country,” says Prof Swanepoel.  

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel:   (051) 401-2584
Cell:  083 645 2454
E-mail:  loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
10 May 2006

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