Wife of the Niger State governor, Hajiya Fatima Bago, has advocated for breast feeding-friendly workplaces and environments for mothers, as 1,800 women converged at different local government areas of the state to breastfeed their babies at the weekend.
Mrs Bago who was the special guest of honour at 2024 World Breast Feeding Day called on all to provide support through education and resources for breastfeeding-friendly environments for women.
Represented by the wife of the Secretary to the State Government, she announced the donation of 100 bags of rice to the first batch of 100 women to support them and their families.
The commissioner for secondary and tertiary health, Dr Bello Turku, said the aim was to showcase the need to improve support for mothers to practice optimal breastfeeding.
He said the Federal Ministry of Health and Niger government in collaboration with UNICEF and other partners come up with the initiative to achieve a world record for lactating women to breastfeeding simultaneously.
The chief of field office, UNICEF Kaduna, Gerida Birukila, said the event was an attempt to break the world record for the highest number of lactating women breastfeeding simultaneously.
“We are not just gathered to break a world record, we are here to make history and send a powerful message to the world on the importance of exclusive breastfeeding,” she said.
Birukila, who was represented by Mrs Grace Odeyemi, UNICEF Consultant in Niger, said exclusive breastfeeding rates had remained low at 16 per cent according to Nigeria Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICs 2021).
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