All parties play an important role to build a supportive ecosystem in our community to encourage not just better awareness and more widespread practice of breastfeeding, but also build a support system to enable breastfeeding for working parents.
This of course involves implementing supportive policies and providing appropriate facilities, resources, and public education that can enable mothers to return to work and still continue breastfeeding.
The first week of August is celebrated worldwide as World Breast Feeding Week (WBW). This year’s theme, “Enabling Breastfeeding: Making a Difference for Working Parents”, is apt to the modern environment of today.
Over 820 000 children’s lives could be saved every year among children under 5 years globally, if all children 0–23 months were optimally breastfed. Breastfeeding improves IQ, school attendance, and is associated with higher income in adult life.
Improving child development and reducing health costs through breastfeeding results in economic gains for individual families as well as at the national level.
That is why, the Government has recognised the importance of this moving forward and it was even addressed in the recent speech by the Prime Minister Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim to put forth his vision of “The Madani Economy”.
That is why all parties, especially the government, policy makers, employers and managers and even members of the public has an important role to play to build a supportive ecosystem to enable breastfeeding for working parents.
Under the Ministry of Health’s National Breastfeeding Policy, nursing mothers are encouraged to breastfeed their babies for at least six months.
While there are policies by government to encourage more mothers to breastfeed their babies including the Malaysia’s Employment (Amendment) Act 2022 which introduced a string of new benefits for employees that include seven days of paid paternity leave and 98 days of maternity leave, it is not sufficient.
Many working mothers struggle to sustain breastfeeding when they return to work, due to inadequacy of breastfeeding facilities or rooms for nursing mothers to express their breast milk both in public & also private sector.
Lactation breaks at workplaces are not provided by any laws. Therefore, to further enhance the practice of breastfeeding on top of providing adequate facilities and room, the employers should also consider granting eligible employees a few breaks in a day to express breast milk and proper storage of breast milk. Then the lactating mother can bring back their milk at the end of their work schedules.
All this can help provide a more supportive ecosystem to allow mothers back to work which spur the country’s economy including those in the informal sector or on temporary contracts . Women shouldn’t have to choose between breastfeeding their children and their jobs.
That is why making breastfeeding at work, work, makes societies work!
Breastfeeding provides vital health and nutritional benefits for children with positive lifelong impacts, building healthier populations – and workforces – for the future.