Dhaka: Too many mothers and families around the world still lack access to services and interventions that enable and support breastfeeding. Yet breastfeeding is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to protect a child's health. It provides infants and young children with essential nutrition, increases immunity, helps protect against serious illness, and supports cognitive development. According to United News of Bangladesh, breastfeeding offers significant health benefits for mothers as well, including reducing the risk of noncommunicable diseases such as breast and ovarian cancers, and type 2 diabetes. Encouragingly, global breastfeeding rates are on the rise. Exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months increased from around 37 percent in 2012 to over 47 percent today. In the past five years, the prevalence of breastfeeding up to two years of age rose from 38 percent to 50 percent. These gains highlight the effectiveness of sustained investments in policies and programmes for mothers and families . However, progress remains uneven, with many countries lagging behind global targets. The coverage of services supporting breastfeeding is low, policies are inconsistently enforced, and service quality is often inadequate, especially in low-income, fragile, and humanitarian settings. The evidence points to cost-effective interventions such as skilled breastfeeding support in health systems, community-based counselling, maternity protection policies, and protection from the exploitative marketing of commercial milk formulas. Scaling up breastfeeding could prevent almost 400,000 child deaths and around 140,000 maternal deaths each year. Every US$1 invested in breastfeeding promotion generates an estimated US$59 in economic returns through lower health-care costs, improved cognitive development, higher educational attainment, and increased lifetime earnings. This World Breastfeeding Week, under the theme, 'Breastfeeding for a Sustainable Start in Life: Strengthen What Works,' UNICEF and WHO are urging countri es to strengthen health systems to provide quality breastfeeding support for mothers and newborns. Their recommendations include expanding community-based counselling and peer programmes, fully implementing and enforcing the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, investing in paid maternity leave and supportive workplace policies, integrating breastfeeding interventions into antenatal, perinatal, and postnatal health-care services, and sustaining breastfeeding support in humanitarian and fragile contexts. Breastfeeding is crucial. By investing in proven solutions, we can give every child the best possible start in life and ensure every mother receives the care and services she needs.
