KARACHI, Aug 4: While counting the demerits of bottle-fed formula for infants, child-health and nutrition specialists at a forum said that health providers had a crucial role to play in the promotion of breastfeeding and food security among children across the country.

They said the revitalisation of the baby-friendly hospitals initiative was essential to make mothers realise there was no substitute for breast milk, and breastfeeding of children right after their birth not only protected them against infections and diseases, but also helped in bonding development.

They were speaking at a workshop organised by the Nutrition Cell of the Sindh health department and the United Nations Children's Fund in connection with World Breastfeeding Week (Aug 1-7) in a hotel on Friday.

Artificial feeding, according to the experts, interfered with bonding, caused persistent diarrhoea and respiratory infections, malnutrition, allergies and intolerance, risk of some chronic diseases and a low intelligence quotient in children. Mothers became pregnant sooner, had increased risk of anaemia and ovarian and breast cancers.

Participants, mostly media persons, were told that in Pakistan the rate of mortality of children below five years was 94 per 1,000 births, while the infant mortality rate was 77 per 1,000 births, and the neonatal mortality rate was 54 per 1,000 births. The maternal mortality rate was estimated as 276 per 100,000 births.

About breastfeeding practices one of the speakers said that as per the Unicef data updated in 2010, only 28 per cent of babies were breastfed within one hour of birth, 37.4pc of babies less than six months of age were exclusively breastfed, 59pc of breastfed babies less than six months old received other foods or drinks from bottle and 36pc of breastfed babies received complementary foods at six to eight months of age.

Another speaker said inappropriate feeding practices with  food insecurity contributed significantly to malnutrition and therefore increased child mortality in most developing countries, including those of South Asia.

The participants were further told that Pakistan (37pc) lagged behind Sri Lanka (76pc), Nepal (53pc), India (46pc) and Bangladesh (43pc) as far as a comparison in terms of exclusive breastfeeding was concerned.

Sindh has a non-early initiation of breastfeeding rate of 82pc, Punjab has not exclusive breastfeeding rate of 68pc, according to the data presented at the workshop.

In her presentation on ‘Protection of breastfeeding and child nutrition’, Prof D. S. Akram, chairperson of the Health Education and Literacy Programme and Nutrition Resource Centre, said risks of mortality among children (up to five months) not on exclusive breastfeeding was 14 times higher than those exclusively breastfed.

Dr Durreshehwar, the provincial government’s focal person on nutrition, Dr Hanif Memon of the Nutrition Cell and Dr Yasir Husaain of Unicef also spoke.