W

hile breast-feeding has been proven to protect newborns from life-threatening diseases such as cancer, the breast-feeding rate in Indonesia continues to fall, experts say.

Minarto, the Health Ministry’s nutrition management director, said on Friday that few mothers were encouraged to breast-feed their newborns exclusively, although many studies showed that drinking breast milk was associated with a decreased risk of many diseases.

The country’s breast-feeding rate is estimated at 60 to 80 percent, he added. However, according to the Indonesian Health and Demographic Survey (SDKI), the prevalence of exclusive breast-feeding at two-months decreased to 48.3 percent in 2007 from 64 percent in 2002, in part as a result of an increasing trend to replace breast milk with baby formula.

According to the 2010 Basic Health Research, the rate of breast-feeding was recorded at 15.3 percent among babies younger than 12 months.

“Many mothers in Indonesia have poor knowledge about the benefits of exclusive breast-feeding, making them highly prone to baby formula sales promotions,” Minarto told journalists on the sidelines of a discussion on exclusive breast-feeding ahead of the 2011 World Breast-feeding Week that would begin later this month.

Citing an example, he said that in hospitals, many mothers were often treated separately from their newborn babies, increasing the opportunity for medical workers, including nurses and midwives, to feed the newborns formula milk, even if it was not necessary.

“We should not give our newborns anything but exclusive breast milk until they are six months old, except if both mothers and their newborns have certain medical complications,” Minarto said.

Providing integrated care units for mothers and infants could lower the chances of medical workers giving formula milk to their newborns, since mothers would be able to care for their child around the clock,
and would have more time to breast-feed them.

Minarto said some mothers felt reluctant to breast-feed their newborns due to a lack of breast-feeding rooms in offices and public areas, such as in malls and shopping centers.

Limited maternity leave makes it harder still for mothers to get a grip with and continue breast-feeding.

In Article 128 of Law No. 39/2009 on Health, it is stipulated that every baby has the right to be breast-fed exclusively for six months.

However, many mothers refuse to breast-feed their children for various reasons.

“We have only about 2,700 breast-feeding counselors nationwide, whereas we have more than 9,000 community health centers. This is far from enough to help breast-feeding mothers,” said Minarto, adding that the ministry would train more counselors and establish the Indonesian Breast-feeding Counselors Association (IKMI) on Aug. 11.

The government is currently deliberating a draft regulation that would stipulate the need to create awareness about the benefits of exclusive breast-feeding.

“All offices and public spaces should provide adequate breast-feeding rooms, while more mother and baby patient care units should be built in the hospitals,” said Minarto.

Utami Roesli, chairman of the Indonesian Center for Lactation (SLI), said exclusive breast-feeding would improve the health of newborns.

“Children who are exclusively breast-fed are six or eight times less likely to develop child cancers such as lymphocytic leukemia and lymphoma,” she said.