‘Breast milk gives life, capable of preventing any form of sickness’, says Obinwanne

A medical practitioner and founder of The Milk Booster, Dr. Chinny Obinwanne, has described breast milk as a “life- given substance and liquid gold capable of preventing any form of sickness.”

She, therefore, called for more awareness campaign on the importance of breastfeeding. She made the call in Lagos at a programme to commemorate the World Breastfeeding week.

She said,“I founded The Milk Booster which is a company that provide products that help mums with their milk supply and I also have the Breastfeeding Doc, which is an educational platform to provide evidence based knowledge for mothers.

“Proper breastfeeding at early age prevents most of our adults from suffering from chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressures and cancer “Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for up to six months of age, with continued breastfeeding along with appropriate complementary foods for up to two years of age or beyond.”

Breast milk to me is life; without breast milk, baby will not get the benefit of overcoming all the ailments.

Breast milk is called liquid gold and a drop of it has thousands of constituents and there is no other liquid in the world that can be compared to it.

She added,“as the theme of this year World Breastfeeding week, Foundation Of Life,we are going back to the foundation.

We all know that if a house is built without a solid foundation, the house will collapse within short period so that is the same thing with our babies; we are going back to the foundation to give the perfect nutrition they require so that they will be able to grow in the best way up till adult hood and the elderly age.

“On how she started the project, Obinwanne who is also a lactation consultant said, “this project began by just helping women increase their milk supply and then, I now notice that insufficient milk supply is not only the issue, there was a huge gap in knowledge like,many of us were doing things the wrong way and I was hearing mothers tell me things that my own mother may have passed, things generation lived by and then they will be picking information from their neighbours and at the end of the day, there was a huge problem, people were making so much error so, I now decided to start teaching.

So, I was teaching everyone on my free platform and people were very happy, then I knew that with our breastfeeding rate at 23.7 per cent, it was time for us to make a change in Nigeria and, we really need to make things better.

Last year, we have our first edition of the breastfeeding week, it was the first time in Lagos and it was smaller setting but this year, we want to go out of our way to encourage mothers, to promote breastfeeding.

Calling on men support, she said, “having a very good support system goes a long way; studies have shown that a supportive partner helps a women to achieve her breastfeeding goal so, basically educating our partners will make it easier.

“Most time the woman go for antenatal, breastfeeding classes alone but when we bring our partners, they would understand the benefit of breastfeeding, why the baby should be breastfed. Every father will be happy to see their babies healthy, active, intelligent, not always sick and even if they fall sick, they recover quickly so, if we give them that knowledge and empower them, we are not going to have the dad drinking the breast milk because he knows that his child needs it the most. Financially, breastfeeding saves money, you will not spend your money on formula. Breastfeeding encourages bonding because the dad is there by the mom side.