All hospitals in the State will be made mother and baby-friendly, Health Minister Veena George has said.
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Kerala is the first State to have implemented the mother and baby-friendly initiative in hospitals. In all, 44 hospitals in the State, including 17 government and 27 private hospitals, have received the mother and baby-friendly initiative certification.
She was inaugurating the World Breastfeeding Fortnight observance. Certificates attesting to the mother and baby-friendly hospital initiative were also distributed.
Despite the progress on various health fronts, breastfeeding was an area where the State needed to do more. Early initiation of breastfeeding was just 41.8% whereas only 63.7% of the babies were exclusively breastfed for the first six months of their lives. The new initiative is expected to improve these stats.
Kerala will soon begin a home-based child-care programme, wherein ASHAs will make home visits to personally monitor the developmental progress of children till the age of 18 months. This was to encourage breastfeeding and to focus on the nutritional requirements of the child and mother, Ms. George claimed.
She said that creches and breastfeeding cubicles needed to be set up in all workplaces where more than 50 women were working.
Director of Health Services K.J. Reena, NHM mission director, Jeevan Babu, UNICEF representative Kaushik Ganguly, among others, participated.
