Staff Correspondent: Dhaka, Aug-24,
In a silver lining in
the pandemic era, Bangladesh has ranked first in the world in supporting
lactating women.
The World Breastfeeding
Trends Initiative (WBTi) has congratulated Bangladesh for having achieved the
status of 'green' nation, along with Sri Lanka.
Only two countries out
of 98 have achieved this status so far. Bangladesh got rank number one by
scoring 91.5 out of 100.
This is based on its performance on 10 indicators of policies and programmes the WBTi uses to colour-code and rank countries. In an ascending order of performance, the colour codes are red, yellow, blue and green.
“Bangladesh that scored
91.5/100 earned a green colour code, which implies the best level of
performance. This has been the result of persistent efforts since 2005 to
pursue improvements.
"Bangladesh
demonstrated high-level commitment, led by its Prime Minister, towards health
and nutrition of mothers and babies,” said Dr Arun Gupta, WBTi's global
coordinator.
Launched in 2004, WBTi
assists countries to assess the status of and benchmark the progress in
implementation of the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF)
in a standard way.
It is based on the
WHO's tool for national assessment of policy and programmes on infant and young
child feeding.
Inadequate
breastfeeding costs the global economy almost $1 billion each day. This loss is
due to lost productivity and healthcare costs. In addition, it saves 700,000
lives annually.
Breastfeeding majorly
benefits child health, women’s health and prevents non-communicable diseases.
This can only be achieved through galvanizing national actions to protect, and
support every pregnant and lactating woman.
The Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare (MoHFW) is actively supporting the breastfeeding actions on
a continuous basis and looks for further development of IYCF in Bangladesh.
“In the latest report
of 2020, several partners together did this assessment and we scored green code
in five out of 10 indicators,” said Dr SK Roy, chairperson of the Bangladesh
Breastfeeding Foundation, who led this effort of assessment.
WBTi was developed by
the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India in Delhi. So far, 125 countries
have been trained to do this assessment and 98 have already completed
assessments.
Many have done it twice
or thrice. First 10 countries include Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Cuba,
Gambia, Bolivia, Turkey, El Salvador, Niger, Kenya, and Kuwait.
India stands at 79,
Nepal at 39 and Maldives at 19. WBTi assists countries to assess and analyse
gaps, and then calls for actions to bridge the gaps.
The WBTi process
includes re-assessment every 3-5 years as an integral part to check the trends
in the country.
According to the
findings of the 'Making A Difference: An Evaluation Report of WBTi in
Mobilising National Actions on Breastfeeding', the more countries do reassessment,
the better are the improvements in policy and programmes to remove the barriers
women face while breastfeeding.
Gains included infant
feeding during emergencies, BFHI and funding, and the report showed if policy
scores improved, it was associated with improved practices.
What WBTi does is to
raise awareness about gaps and the need to generate action so that the
governments and employers can come forward to bridge the gaps where needed.
The WBTi tools generate
colour-coded simple graphics, which are easily understandable by the
policymakers to identify and prioritise areas for investment.
For example, if an
indicator is in ‘red’ it needs greater attention. Thus WBTi comes in handy to
strengthen a country’s policy implementation and services.
Some 41% of infants
less than six months of age are exclusively breastfed, far short of the 2030
global target of 70%.
According to WHO and
UNICEF, every pregnant and breastfeeding woman and the baby require an enabling
environment in order to begin breastfeeding within an hour of birth, breastfeed
exclusively for six months and continue breastfeeding along with adequate food
till two years or beyond.
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