Drive to ensure mothers make right breastfeeding decision
Hospitals awarded 'baby friendly' accreditation when they promote and support natural feeding
The World Health Organisation has been promoting breastfeeding as the natural way to provide infants with the nutrients they need for healthy growth and development, with the benefit of improving mother-baby bonding.
Part of their global effort is the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, launched together with the United Nations Children's Fund to implement practices that protect, promote and support breastfeeding.
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative Hong Kong Association (BFHIHKA) is entrusted by UNICEF to assess and accredit healthcare facilities in Hong Kong as "baby friendly" facilities.
The initiative is intended to make sure that all mothers have the information they need to make the best decisions about infant feeding and, when a mother chooses to breastfeed, the nurses and doctors will fully support her decision and help in every way possible to ensure that she succeeds.
The newborn is placed over the chest of his/her mother right after delivery so they can have immediate skin-to-skin contact. This is when the mother and her newborn get up to an hour of contact, up close and personal, inside the delivery ward.
Moreover, the mothers appreciate this new arrangement of rooming in with their newborns immediately after labour in order to encourage breastfeeding. Babies also sleep at their mothers' bedsides during the entire stay, so the newborn can be breastfed regularly.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence also recommends the implementation of a more "baby friendly movement" in all maternity and community health care facilities, to improve local breastfeeding rates and to extend the feeding period.
Currently, there are more than 20,000 hospitals in 156 countries certified as "baby friendly".
In Hong Kong, the breastfeeding rate has continued to rise over the past two decades, from 19 per cent in 1994 - while the mother were still in hospital - to 86 per cent in 2013. The rate for exclusive breastfeeding after mothers have been discharged remains low, however.
Public hospitals, which delivered more than 43,200 babies in 2012/13, are aiming to improve the health of both newborns and their mother by promoting, protecting and supporting breastfeeding.
With the support from the Food and Health Bureau, the Hospital Authority is taking initiatives to further promote breastfeeding.
This includes enhancing corporate involvement to develop protocol in attaining and retaining the "baby friendly" designation at the eight birthing hospitals in Hong Kong in phases.
The Hospital Authority has set up a management structure to drive the accreditation initiative at corporate and hospital levels.
At the corporate level, the authority's steering committee for breastfeeding was set up in 2009, involving doctors, nurses, and representatives from the specialties of obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, dietetics, the Department of Health and the BFHIHKA.
The role of the steering committee is to set direction and formulate policy to promote breastfeeding. Other committees were also set up to monitor the promotion and training in area hospitals.