Empowering parents to give newborns best start possible

Poonam Khetrapal Singh
Regional director WHO Southeast Asia

PREMIUM

New Delhi / Wed, August 7, 2019 / 01:08 pm

Empowering parents to give newborns best start possible

For mom and babies: A woman stands in a nursing room of Senayan City shopping mall in Jakarta. Decent nursing rooms are available in some public spaces in the capital city, including in a number of upmarket shopping malls. (JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)

Breastfeeding is on the rise across the World Health Organization’s Southeast Asia region. The region’s newborns will be better for it. Last year, approximately 54 percent of all infants were exclusively breastfed up to the age of six months. That’s up from 47 percent in 2015 and 50 percent in 2017, and compares to 38 percent of newborns across the world and just 18 percent in industrialized countries. The region’s average is the highest of any WHO region, and is already above the 2025 global target of ensuring at least 50 percent of newborns are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life. We can be proud of the region’s leadership, which reflects several of its “flagship priorities”, including ending preventable newborn and child deaths and preventing non-communicable diseases. We should also look at how the region’s leaders...