UNICEF has reported that 23 per cent of children born in Rivers State suffered growth deficiency last year.
UNICEF’s Nutrition Specialist Field Officer Ngozi Onuora spoke at a two-day advocacy and sensitisation meeting with health care givers and regulatory agencies in Port Harcourt, the state capital.
Onuora urged nursing mothers to ensure they dedicate their first six months to exclusive breastfeeding to save their babies from stunted growth.
In a lecture, titled: “Economic and health benefits of exclusive breastfeeding,” a Professor of Paediatrics in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Alice Nte, said: breastfeeding children exclusively for the first six months after birth has been identified as a protection from child killer diseases.”
Nte said over 200,000 infant deaths could be prevented, if babies were exclusively breastfed in the first six months.
According to her, breast milk provides newborn with high nutrient value and immune properties not found in artificial milk.
Other health benefits from breast feeding and breast milk are “rich anti-body, many white cells that enhance growth, increase in child’s intelligent quotient, purgative effects and vitamin ‘A’, which is easily digested by babies with 50 per cent absorption rate compared to other milk that are absorbed at 10 per cent.’’
“Breast milk also increases bond between mother and child, reduces ovarian and breast cancer at 60 per cent, and delays new pregnancy.”