Jan­nelle Bernard

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to es­tab­lish a hu­man milk bank to en­sure every ba­by has ac­cess to breast milk re­gard­less of a moth­er’s med­ical cir­cum­stances.

While ad­dress­ing stake­hold­ers at the Min­istry of Health head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Bo­doe said, “We are tak­ing de­ci­sive steps with the sup­port of the Fed­er­at­ed Re­pub­lic of Brazil and tech­ni­cal guid­ance from PA­HO/WHO to es­tab­lish a hu­man milk bank right here in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Bo­doe said an event com­mem­o­rat­ing World Breast­feed­ing Week.

“Once op­er­a­tional, Trinidad and To­ba­go will not on­ly ben­e­fit lo­cal­ly, but be po­si­tioned to guide oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion seek­ing to es­tab­lish their own milk banks.”

He added that this will al­so as­sist in strength­en­ing ef­forts to elim­i­nate moth­er-to-child trans­mis­sion of HIV.

Boast­ing about the coun­try’s gains, the Health Min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that this coun­try had ex­ceed­ed in­ter­na­tion­al breast­feed­ing tar­gets.

“Our na­tion­al ini­ti­a­tion of breast­feed­ing rate cur­rent­ly stands at an im­pres­sive 90 per cent, ex­ceed­ing the glob­al tar­get of 80 per cent,” he said.

He added that four lo­cal hos­pi­tals, Point Fortin, Mount Hope, San­gre Grande and Scar­bor­ough, were glob­al­ly ac­cred­it­ed un­der the Ba­by Friend­ly Hos­pi­tal Ini­tia­tive, while two more on track for as­sess­ment.

Dr Bo­doe called for sus­tain­able sup­port for breast­feed­ing, and en­cour­aged em­ploy­ers and health­care providers to con­tin­ue to cre­ate sus­tain­able sup­port sys­tems for moth­ers and their ba­bies. This, he said, re­quired the cre­ation of en­abling en­vi­ron­ments, not on­ly with­in the home but al­so in the work­place.

“We must con­tin­ue to build sup­port­ive en­vi­ron­ments in hos­pi­tals, work­places and com­mu­ni­ties so that moth­ers can suc­cess­ful­ly breast­feed for the rec­om­mend­ed six months and be­yond,” he said.

He re­it­er­at­ed the health ben­e­fits of breast­feed­ing for both moth­ers and ba­bies be­yond in­fan­cy.

“There is ev­i­dence that breast­feed­ing has pro­tec­tive rules against obe­si­ty, hy­per­ten­sion, dys­lipi­demia and Type II di­a­betes mel­li­tus dur­ing adult­hood. This is a fur­ther rea­son and a very im­por­tant rea­son why we should en­cour­age breast­feed­ing, be­cause as we know, we have a scourge of NCDs (non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases) in this coun­try.”

The Health Min­is­ter point­ed out that the ben­e­fits are far-reach­ing, say­ing breast­feed­ing is a vi­tal part of this coun­try’s so­cioe­co­nom­ic and health­care sys­tem.

“It is al­so a pow­er­ful pub­lic health tool and a sus­tain­able prac­tice that ben­e­fits our fam­i­lies, our health care sys­tem and in­deed our plan­et.”

De­scrib­ing breast­feed­ing as a deeply per­son­al act of love, Dr Bo­doe said Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing every moth­er and child in T&T was giv­en the sup­port, pro­tec­tion and re­sources they need to be­gin life with the best pos­si­ble foun­da­tion through breast­feed­ing.

Mean­while, Coun­try Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion/WHO, Dr Gabriel Vi­vas, cau­tioned against the in­ap­pro­pri­ate mar­ket­ing of food prod­ucts which com­pet­ed with breast­feed­ing. He said the in­tro­duc­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial foods and breast milk sub­sti­tutes could in­flu­ence a moth­er’s abil­i­ty to make in­formed choic­es about breast­feed­ing.

Vi­vas called for vig­i­lance in pro­tect­ing and pro­mot­ing op­ti­mal feed­ing prac­tices for in­fants and young chil­dren.

World Breast­feed­ing Week is com­mem­o­rat­ed dur­ing the first week of Au­gust an­nu­al­ly.