In line with the recently concluded World Breastfeeding Week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that the risk of Covid-19 infection from breastfeeding is negligible.

‘WHO has been very clear in its recommendations to say absolutely breastfeeding should continue. We have never documented, anywhere around the world, any Covid-19 transmission through breastmilk’, the Head of Food and Nutrition Action in Health Systems Unit at WHO, Dr Laurence Grummer-Strawn, said.

Development Diaries learnt that the health organisation tested the breastmilk of many mothers around the world, although a few samples had contained the virus when the organisation followed up to see whether the virus was actually viable and could be infective, the WHO could not find any actual infective virus.

Grummer-Strawn said, ‘This is only one of the reasons why new mothers should initiate skin-to-skin contact and room-in with their babies quickly, as the risks of transmission of the Covid-19 virus from a Covid-positive mother to her baby seem to be extremely low’.

Speaking on the longstanding support for using mother’s milk over substitutes, Grummer-Strawn warned that the pandemic had weakened essential breastfeeding support usually provided to families with newborns.

He said, ‘The interruption of services has been tremendous around the world, providing the kind of support mothers normally would get with breastfeeding. Oftentimes, the health services that would provide maternal child health have been diverted to take care of the Covid response; sometimes families do not feel comfortable in going into the health services, because they [are] afraid that they might get Covid and so they [do not] come for the routine kinds of support’.

‘About 820,000 children’s lives are lost every year because of a lack of breastfeeding. Economically, there are losses of about $300 billion a year in economic productivity, lost because of a lack of breastfeeding’, the organisation added.

WHO and UNICEF have recommended that babies be fed nothing but breast milk for their first six months, after which they should continue breastfeeding – as well as eating other nutritious and safe foods – until at least two years old.

Source: Africa Renewal