WBW 2015: Women and Work, Let’s Make it WORK

Whether you celebrate World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) or National Breastfeeding Month, and whether you choose the first week in August or October, the time to be launching your efforts is NOW!

The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) is perhaps best known for its global sponsorship of World Breastfeeding Week (WBW), but it is much more: WABA is a global network of individuals and organizations concerned with the protection, promotion & support of breastfeeding worldwide. WABA’s actions are based on the Innocenti Declaration, the Ten Links for Nurturing the Future and the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding. WABA is in consultative status with UNICEF and is also an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC). Its Core Partners include ABM, IBFAN, ILCA, LLLI and Wellstart International, with a shared mission: “To protect, promote and support breastfeeding worldwide, in the framework of the Innocenti Declarations (1990 and 2005) and the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding, through networking and facilitating collaborative efforts in social mobilisation, advocacy, information dissemination and capacity building.”
World Breastfeeding Week this year occurs on the 25th anniversary of the Innocenti Declaration, signed by more than 30 countries (including the US) that stated the countries’ intention to implement the following by 1995:

• Create a national multidisciplinary authority for government support and oversight of breastfeeding
• Ensure all hospitals practice the Ten Steps for Breastfeeding
• Implement the International Code of Marketing and subsequent WHA resolutions
• And, last but by no means least, ensure maternity protection, including the ILO guidance of at least 14 weeks paid maternity leave and workplace accommodation.

This year’s theme supports the Innocenti Declaration as well as WABA’s goal to create an enabling environment for mothers and families worldwide to decide to optimally breastfeed and to succeed in that goal Breastfeeding and Work – Let’s make it work! This theme highlights the importance of ongoing support for necessary leave and workplace support.

Now is the time to inspire, empower and educate while we support, protect and promote breastfeeding. Get ready to act now in support of the theme for World Breastfeeding Week 2015. Please visit worldbreastfeedingweek.org for information on the theme, materials you can download, a photo contest and WBW 2015 Pledge forms to tell the world about your efforts.

Miriam H Labbok, MD, MPH, IBCLC, FABM, FILCA is Professor and Director of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global School Public Health. She is a Founder, past president and member of the board of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine.

Posts on this blog reflect the opinions of individual ABM members, not the organization as a whole.