CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Breast feeding promotion plays a significant role in the well being of nursing mother and their children. There have been so many benefits from breast feeding for nursing mothers and their child; for mothers the benefits include decreased risk of ovarian and breast cancers, potential reduced risk of postpartum depression, and potential contribution to weight loss (return to pre-pregnancy weight). Financial benefits for the family in the infant’s first year of life include savings up to $1500 in formula cost (Haroon et al., 2013). Decreased incidence of illness in the first year also contributes to significant cost savings to the family.
According to (Eidelman & Schanler, 2012; USDHHS-3, 2011) stated that the estimated cost savings in the U.S. if 90% of families exclusively breastfed for six months is 13 billion dollars related to health care costs.
Common barriers for mothers to initiate or continue breastfeeding include lack of experience or understanding, lack of support, including from family and employers, inadequate support with troubleshooting, lack of up-to-date information from health care providers, and hospital practices that fail to promote breastfeeding (Brown, Raynor, & Lee, 2011; USDHHS-1, 2011).
According to (Taveras et al., 2003) stated that provider support has shown to increase breastfeeding initiations and continuance rates.
Primary care providers can improve breastfeeding rates through the implementation of several interventions including the following: time-specific education guidelines; presentation of breastfeeding as the rule or norm, not the exception in infant feeding; maintain up-to-date education and skills related to breastfeeding promotion; providing resources to support breastfeeding mothers; and creating follow-up protocols for the clinic to support women to start and continue breastfeeding (Eidelman & Schanler, 2012; USDHHS-4, 2011).
A systematic review of the literature completed by Haroon, Das, Salam, Imdad, & Bhutta (2013) showed that breastfeeding promotion interventions not only significantly increased rates of exclusive breastfeeding, but also decreased the rate of those not breastfeeding at all. The study in this regard wishes to carry out an examination of breast feeding promotion using the primary health center as the case study.