0 Breast-feeding promoted as modern lifestyle among parents

As a way to promote breast-feeding as a modern lifestyle among parents in Bali, hundreds of young Balinese parents and medical workers launched the Bali chapter Association of Indonesian Breast-Feeding Mothers (AIMI) on Saturday in Denpasar. The association is the metamorphosis of the Bali Peduli ASI (Bali Care for Mother’s Milk) community, which is mainly driven by mothers and fathers who are concerned with the low number of babies being breast-fed in Bali. 

“We hope to popularize breast-feeding as a modern lifestyle that is both healthy and fun,” said Oka Dharmawan, the founder of Bali Peduli ASI community. “Back in the old days, breast-feeding might only be performed at home, but now there have been many public spaces, from offices, airports, terminals to malls, that have been providing nursing rooms for breast-feeding mothers,” he said. 

Based on the national socioeconomic survey (Susenas) in 2010, Bali only recorded some 63 percent of mothers exclusively feeding their babies on breast milk up to the age of 6 months. The figure is the third lowest among Indonesian provinces, below Aceh (49.6 percent) and East Java. “Bali is the among the lowest of Indonesia’s provinces for breast-feeding babies,” said AIMI Bali activist Gek Wulan Mahaswari. 

“There have been laws and regulations made to protect the rights of newborns to be fed on breast milk. However, they have not led to any significant changes in Bali,” said Wulan. Chairwoman of the Sentra Laktasi Indonesia (Indonesian Lactation Center), pediatrician Utami Roesli, acknowledged that there had been policies that obliged medical workers to encourage mothers to breast-feed their newborn infants. 

“The policies even stipulated that violators would be officially warned and could have their medical licenses revoked,” she said. AIMI chairwoman Mia Sutanto nonetheless regretted the aggressive promotion and marketing by manufacturers of baby formula that had served as huge obstacles to the promotion of breast-feeding. In addition to that, many hospitals still allowed the use of baby formula and had yet to provide a one-stop treatment room for mothers and infants that would allow them to initiate early breast-feeding. 

The current low awareness of the importance of breast-feeding babies has resulted in low immunity levels among babies and children, an increasing risk of breast cancer and growing financial burden on by young families.

source : bali daily