The influence of health education on breast feedingpractices in Benin City, Nigeria

Abstract

Many mothers from developing countries including Nigeria are introducing their babies to artificial milk feeding early in life. This is probably due to the rapidly increasing female education whereby working mothers had to go back to work 6–8 weeks after delivery. In this study, only 31·4% of the mothers wholly breast fed their babies at confinement in spite of the health educational activities of breast feeding practices during antenatal clinic (A.N.C.) attendances. Breast feeding declined rapidly after discharge from hospital, and artificial milk feeding was well established at 6–8 weeks, post confinement, for socio—economic reasons. It is suggested that for these working mothers, bottle-feeding practices should be welldemonstrated to them so as to minimize the ill effects that ignorance and malutilization of the artificial milk may cause. For the non-working mothers, health educational activities on the advantages of breast feeding and breast milk should be continuous and continuing.