Has COVID-19 Affected Breastfeeding Promotion and Support Practices?
- Duration: 40 Mins
- Credits:
- Handout: Yes
Abstract:
Mothers, families and professionals faced extraordinary challenges that differed depending on resources and local considerations during the COVID Pandemic. Isolation measures, fear and other issues menaced in many countries, the important quality of perinatal care and breastfeeding support measures that BFHI hospitals offer. Though WHO recommendations regarding perinatal care and breastfeeding support for mothers and families during the Pandemic were published early, these recommendations were not followed everywhere. In some countries, fear for possible mother and/or infant exposure or for professional's exposure might precluded mother-infant closeness and skin-to-skin contact. Direct breastfeeding was not recommended by some health authorities in some countries or in some regions. With the endorsement of the BFHI Network Coordinating Committee I designed and conducted a survey among the members of the BFHI Network. The survey was meant to collect information about how the Pandemic had been faced in different settings/countries. The objective was to learn how to move forward and how to improve the way we fought the pandemic in the perinatal area and protected mothers and infants, while preserving humanization and quality of care in the near future and for other pandemics that might come. The objective of this talk is to share the results of this Survey.
Learning Objectives:
Objective 1: Understand the reasons of WHO recommendations regarding perinatal care
and breastfeeding protection during the COVID-19
Objective 2: Describe what the BFHI Network is and name some of its objectives
Objective 3: Reason on a risk assessment basis why skin-to-skin contact, direct breastfeeding
and close contact between mother and infant must not be precluded even during the COVID-19
pandemic.
