Corporate Organizations within the public and private sectors in Anambra State have been advised to establish crèches in their workplaces to help nursing mothers breastfeed their children after their maternity leaves.
The State Team leader of a non governmental organization, Alive and Thrive, Dr Uche Ralph-Opara gave the advice in Awka while delivering a paper “maternity protections and examples in private sector engagements in Nigeria and beyond” at a Stakeholders meeting on Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition, MICYN.
The Stakeholders meeting on Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition, MICYN is an engagement driven platform targeted at helping stakeholders stimulate a change in policies that will protect mothers and their babies by giving them better access to nutrition at that levels of their lives.
Participants were drawn from the office of the Head of Service, Ministries of Economic Planning and Budgets, Agriculture, Health and Finance, representatives of Labour Unions, civil society organizations, World Health Organizations, Anambra Primary Health Care Development Agency, religious groups and the media.
Dr Ralp-Opara stated that having save workplace for women will go a long way in improving mother and child health.
She also advocated promotion of policies that will also protect women at work places during their period of giving birth to prevent any threat to the security of their jobs.
Also speaking, the Executive Secretary, Anambra State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Chioma Ezeenyimulu revealed that the Anambra State Government has trained nutritional focal persons in all Local Government Areas to identify malnourished children and place them on ready-to-use-therapeutic foods at the special treatment centres.
Dr Ezeenyimulu said that the move was to ensure that no child is malnourished in Anambra State.
Earlier, the Anambra State Nutrition Officer, Mrs Uzoamaka Eriken presented some of the statistics as it concerns the state of nutrition among children in the state and expressed confidence that the meeting will help to cause a rethink in policies that will help improve the lives of mothers, infants and young children.
Participants at the meeting called for a holistic advocacy that will properly enlighten nursing mothers and other members of the society to provide the needed support.
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