The Abia State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (PHDA) is advocating establishment of Exclusive Breastfeeding Corners in government offices, including ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) as well as offices of private organisations, schools, churches and motor parks.

Already, the agency has employed the services of about 1, 360 counselors to promote awareness about exclusive breastfeeding across the state which has resulted in 18 percent increase in exclusive breastfeeding practice.

The Executive Secretary of Abia State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (PHDA), Dr. Chukwuemeka Oluoha, made this known at a press briefing in Umuahia to mark the 2015 World Exclusive Breastfeeding Day which has the theme, “Exclusive Breastfeeding and Work: Let's Make it Work.”

It would be celebrated in Abia between August 17 and 21 and would climax with baby show, whereby nursing mothers would compete for the most successful exclusively breastfed baby from the local governments to the state level.

Dr. Oluoha said Abia PHDA has laid out strategy to create mother-friendly work places in the state. “We should not just say it, we should make it work,” Dr. Oluoha said, adding, “We must activate it and make it a policy that every establishment (both public and private) must set up breastfeeding corners,” he added.

Presently Abia has achieved 18 percent performance in exclusive breastfeeding practice, up from the 13 percent recorded in 2008 NDHS survey.

According to the Executive Secretary, the low exclusive breastfeeding response prompted the agency to adopt the method of using counselors with no fewer than 80 counselors identified and trained in each of the 17 local governments to offer exclusive breastfeeding and ante-natal advice to new and old mothers that lacked the knowledge of exclusive breastfeeding.

Dr. Oluoha said though Abia leads in exclusive breastfeeding practice among the UNICEF ‘A’ Field office, the 18 percent rating “is totally unsatisfactory as the state still falls far below national target of 80 per cent and national performance average of 26 percent."

"We are expecting to inch forward with the support of UNICEF which has identified Abia’s approach of using counselors to expand exclusive breastfeeding as a model worth emulating by other states.”

Describing exclusive breastfeeding as “a core child survival strategy,” he assured that Abia would continue to expand exclusive breastfeeding practice among mothers, saying, “The road open to Abia is upwards movement.”

Oluoha identified age-old superstition as the major challenge militating against exclusive breastfeeding campaign in Abia, pointing out that grandmothers still propagate the belief that water should complement breast milk in the diet of new babies.

•Photo shows Gov. Ikpeazu