Breastfeeding Rate Is Low in China
Shuzhi Zhang | | Aug 05, 2013 08:38 AM EDT |
August 2nd, along with the coming 22nd International Breastfeeding Week, a survey in ninety cities of China shows that only 15.66% infants who are under six months can get the full breastfeeding (not includ any other powdered milk or food).
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According to the data from World Bank, the breastfeeding rate for the infants under six months has dropped from 67% in 1998 to 27.6% in 2008. In the recent years, Chinese Ministry of Health and Chinese Maternal Child System have made great efforts to introduce the benefits of breastfeeding. However, more and more breast-milk substitutes have been brought into the market. The gross sale of these substitutes rose from 500 millions in 2005 to 3.5 billions in 2012. Breastfeeding & Nurturing Center, a breastfeeding educational non-profit institution carried out a national survey in ninety cities. They randomly picked two thousand pregnant women and infants aged between newborn and one year old from Chinese hospitals. The survey covered many aspects such as the willing of breastfeeding, infant feeding approaches and the knowledge of breastfeeding.
As mentioned above, the rate of breastfeeding is about 15.66%, similar to the data from the World Bank. The powder milk, especially the products imported from the foreign countries, are advertised in a soft and nice way so that many of the pregnant women accept the misleading information, which makes them think that the powdered milk is better than the breast milk. Besides, the powdered milk manufacturers send the free sample to the parents and try to deliver the misleading information to the parents. Although about only 7% believe in powdered milk, about 66% of the pregnant women believe that the breast milk is not rich in nutrition for the infants.
Another factor causing the low rate of breast-feeding is that parents feed their babies with substitutes earlier. Based on the suggestions of China Ministry of Health and the WHO, the babies should be breast feed within six months if there are no other contractions. The survey shows the opposite data that parents begin to feed the substitutes before the babies reach six month-old. Some of the parents even start feeding the substitutes from three-month old.
The president of the Breastfeeding & Nurturing Center, Dong Mingzu points out that it is important to know why the mothers choose the milk feeding ways and how much breastfeeding knowledge they have. It is a social problem rather than the mothers' problem. It is helpful for the specialists and the public to know the obstacles of the breastfeeding so that it can be solved. Improving the breastfeeding rate requires the corporation from different fields, such as the government, the public, the hospitals, the associated institutions, etc. The specialists should take the responsibilities to introduce the correct and scientific breastfeeding information to the mothers and their families.
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