All Bihar district hospitals to be made feeding bottle-free by end of 2022

All district hospitals across Bihar will be milk bottle-free by December 2022. As of now, 12 district hospitals have been declared milk bottle-free.

The state health society, department of health and family welfare, has been working with the technical support of the UNICEF, Bihar, to encourage breastfeeding and end bottle feeding. To achieve the target of completely eliminating bottle feeding from all district hospitals by the end of 2022, a special awareness drive has been planned. The Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) counsellors at hospitals will make the hospital staff aware about the adverse impacts of bottle feeding. They would also be asked to ensure breastfeeding within an hour of birth. Besides, special breastfeeding rooms will be developed at all the health institutions to promote this practice.

“For the last two-three years we have been trying to make district hospitals bottle-free. We have been able to achieve this target in 12 district hospitals: Arwal, Bhagalpur, Gaya, Jehanabad, Khagaria, Muzaffarpur, Purnea, Samastipur, Saran, Sheikhpura, and Sitamarhi. Now there’s the target to make all district hospitals milk bottle-free by the end of 2022,” Dr Vijay Prakash Rai, programme officer, child health at the State Health Society, said.

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Focus is on the effective implementation of the Infant Milk Substitutes (Feeding Bottles and Infant Foods) Act. Activities like promotion of milk substitute or feeding bottles would be banned on the hospital premises. The Act, further amended in 2003, bans all forms of promotion of foods marketed to children up to two years of age.

However, Nipurn Gupta, communication expert, Unicef, Bihar, said the concept of bottle-free hospitals is to ensure breastfeeding. But in case a mother has a lactation problem, counsellors help her in identifying the problem, she said.

“This kind of problem is mainly related to mental health of the mother. So the effort is made to sort out the issue through counselling and emotional support. In case there’s a need of medical treatment, that too is made available,” she said.

Sometimes, the newborn is too weak to suckle. In that case, hospital staff try to collect mother’s milk and feed the baby with a spoon, she added.

Dr Shivani Dar, nutrition expert from Unicef, Bihar, said bottle feeding is unsafe and should never be encouraged. “Most of the serious infections in newborn are through feeding bottles. Even among children in the age groups of three months to two years, problems such as diarrhoea or malnutrition are caused by feeding bottles ,” she said.

Bimalesh Sinha, deputy director, child health, state health society, said,“Some basic infrastructure is required for this practice... Breastfeeding rooms will be provided at all the hospitals.”

All ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activists) workers, ANM (Auxiliary Nurse Midwife) and the anganbadi women have been asked to visit door-to-door to identify pregnant women and make them aware about breastfeeding, he said.