By Kabuye Ronald
Nutrition advocates under the umbrella body Civil Society Alliance for Nutrition Uganda CISANU have called for free breastfeeding lesson to pregnant women, health workers and mothers of all ages.
Speaking during a capacity building meeting on the implementation of the commitments in Uganda Nutrition Action Plan II on breastfeeding, iron and vitamin A, Esther Nasikye said that’s important for mothers of all ages but most especially young mothers to understand the issues of breastfeeding and the importance of exclusive breastfeeding of their children for the first six months adding that many young mothers don’t even know how to breastfeed children.
Nasikye also said that Experience has proven that many health workers in the various healthy facilities are also not able to support the mothers or sometimes they are overwhelmed because of the so many mothers they need to attend to hence they don’t take adequate time to teach the mothers how to place the baby, how to stimulate milk, the foods they have to eat to have sufficient milk for the baby which in end becomes a challenge since mothers move out of the hospital when they don’t know what to do thus encountering challenges while home.
“It’s important to sensitize mothers on how to breastfeed and the proper food to feed on as well as training the health workers to be able to support mothers adequately. I urge also the private facilities that charge mothers for such lessons to stop because it hinders access and in end affect the mother and the baby.” Said Nasikye
Richard Baguma Tinkasimire, the CISANU Convener said that there is need for integration of all key stakeholders in advocating for better Nutrition which broaden the sensitization scope. Adding that it must be deliberate, intentional, informative and continuous.
“Many successful ventures can only be effective and benefit people when you work together and for us in the area of food security and nutrition we think it’s critical that very many diverse important players and stakeholders who must come together to achieve results must work in an intentional and deliberate way to combine efforts. They must also reduce or stop the unnecessary and useless competition because nutrition cannot be achieved by one sector” said Baguma
