World Breastfeeding Week

The first week of August each year is the World Breastfeeding Week to encourage and create more awareness on breastfeeding. It is celebrated between August 1 and 7 in more than 120 countries worldwide this year with the theme 'Breastfeeding: The 1st Hour - Early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding for six months can save more than one million babies!'
In conjunction with this, two events, one local and one global, will be held on Aug 5 and 8 to encourage breastfeeding, create awareness on the benefits of breastfeeding and take part in the Global Breastfeeding Wave.
The first event, jointly organised by Penang Adventist Hospital and World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), will be held at Level 7, Gurney Plaza on Aug 5 from 2pm to 5pm.
The highlight of the event will be a mass gathering of breastfeeding mothers, babies, supporters and families at 3pm and door gifts will be given to the first 100 mothers.
There will also be two breastfeeding-related contests, a breastfeeding photo and caption contest and a breastfeeding slogan contest, where winners get to walk away with attractive prizes.
Other activities lined up for the event include breastfeeding counselling for new mothers, breastfeeding certificate presentation, baby obstacle race, performances and even a competition for fathers to see how fast they are able to put the baby in a sling.
The Global Breastfeeding Wave will be held at 10am on Aug 8 at the Penang Caring Society Complex as an inaugural world attempt for mothers from different participating countries to breastfeed their babies for one minute.
The event will be held in collaboration with Penang Adventist Hospital, Penang State Health Department and International Women’s Association of Penang and is supported by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development.
Other events such as free counselling, health checks for mother and child and video screenings will also be held during the event and registration for the event starts from 8.30am.
The criteria for participating mothers are that they are still breastfeeding their infants or young child. The Global Breastfeeding Wave will start from New Zealand on their time followed by the next time zone and so on until the Wave hits Malaysia at 10am and then it will pass the Wave on to the next time zone and countries. Among other participating countries are US, Uganda, India, UK, Greece, Canada and the Dominican Republic.
This first ever Global Breastfeeding Wave is organised in hopes of creating the Guinness World Record on Synchronised Breastfeeding in Multiple Sites in an effort to make policy makers and communities recognise the importance of breastfeeding initiation during the first hour of birth.
The Global Breastfeeding Wave also aimed to make breastfeeding a norm, to develop links with mothers and breastfeeding advocates, to create awareness on the importance of breastfeeding in the world, to encourage countries to ensure the implementation of better infant and young child feeding practices and better suport facilities for breastfeeding mothers and to help nations cooperate in reviving the breastfeeding culture.
For further details, please contact Sabrina Sunderajj at WABA, 04-658 4816 or 012-415 6446, email: globalbreastfeedingwave@yahoo.co.uk. WABA was formed on February 14, 1991. It is a global network of organisations and individuals who believe breastfeeding is the right of all children and mothers and who dedicate themselves to protect, promote and support this right. WABA acts on the Innocenti Declaration and works in liaison with UNICEF.