Volunteers prepare food during a community health outreach in Kenya. Nairobi County’s nutrition coordinator has been briefing residents on the county’s nutrition programme. Photo: Tech. Sgt. Daniel St. Pierre/Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
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Nairobi County pushes exclusive breastfeeding in Eastleigh sensitisation drive.
Nairobi County held a World Breastfeeding Week sensitisation drive at Eastleigh Health Centre, with county nutrition officials urging families to support exclusive breastfeeding, according to the source credited below.
Background
World Breastfeeding Week is marked every August, and the public health case for exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months is one of the least contested in child nutrition: it lowers the risk of diarrhoeal disease and pneumonia, which remain leading causes of death in young children in Kenya, and it costs nothing. The obstacles are practical rather than informational. Mothers who return to work early, who trade in a market or a salon, or who have no private space, find exclusive breastfeeding difficult regardless of what they know about it.
Why it matters here
That is the Kibra version of the problem exactly. Many mothers here are back at a stall or a client's house within weeks, workplaces rarely offer a place to express or feed, and the fallback is early introduction of other foods prepared with water whose safety cannot be guaranteed. County sensitisation drives are useful, but the thing that changes behaviour in a settlement is a nearby facility with a functioning maternal and child health clinic and a community health promoter who follows up at home.
What to watch next
Whether the county pairs the campaign with workplace and market-level provision, and whether exclusive breastfeeding rates in Nairobi's informal settlements are reported separately.
This story was put together by K N N from material first published by Facebook.
That was a Kibra News Network report, read by an A I voice.
Nairobi County held a World Breastfeeding Week sensitisation drive at Eastleigh Health Centre, with county nutrition officials urging families to support exclusive breastfeeding, according to the source credited below.
Background
World Breastfeeding Week is marked every August, and the public health case for exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months is one of the least contested in child nutrition: it lowers the risk of diarrhoeal disease and pneumonia, which remain leading causes of death in young children in Kenya, and it costs nothing. The obstacles are practical rather than informational. Mothers who return to work early, who trade in a market or a salon, or who have no private space, find exclusive breastfeeding difficult regardless of what they know about it.
Why it matters here
That is the Kibra version of the problem exactly. Many mothers here are back at a stall or a client’s house within weeks, workplaces rarely offer a place to express or feed, and the fallback is early introduction of other foods prepared with water whose safety cannot be guaranteed. County sensitisation drives are useful, but the thing that changes behaviour in a settlement is a nearby facility with a functioning maternal and child health clinic and a community health promoter who follows up at home.
What to watch next
Whether the county pairs the campaign with workplace and market-level provision, and whether exclusive breastfeeding rates in Nairobi’s informal settlements are reported separately.
