Breastfeeding

Key thought: A smart manager dealing with Public health has a host of reasons to promote breastfeeding.

Brief:
The perfect solution to all the management challenges!

To the manager-in-charge of production and quality control, here is a product, customised for each individual client, yet never fails on quality. A product that always has the right ingredients; is always served at the right temperature and always satisfies!

To the manager-in-charge of logistics, here is a product with no hassles of supply chain, no hassles of storage and no need for a warehouse; has reach to the most inaccessible areas, in even the worst climatic conditions, any time during the year, day-and-night; in transit, at homes, everywhere.

To the human resource manager the product and the service need no staff deployment to manage consumption and use; and definitely does not require any supervisory or managerial staff to provide oversight.

To the finance manager, this product needs no budgeting, resource mobilisation, no expenditure reporting and, as no costs are involved, no auditing!

So much for human ingenuity and management capacity, nature has provided the perfect nutrient mix, needed for every newborn, infant and child…the mother’s milk. It is so perfect, that when a popular and high impact Medical Journal known as Lancet did an analysis, breastfeeding came up, not surprisingly, as the most effective evidence based intervention to save children’s lives.

Yet, breastfeeding has its own challenges, poised by inferior substitutes, especially when combined with certain social norms and practices. Norms that interfere with the mother’s right to initiate breastfeeding at the earliest, exclusively breastfeed the child until six months and continue breastfeeding at least until 2 years.

Points to ponder: As a manager, how would you determine the challenges to promoting breastfeeding and what could you do to overcome them?

Action points: Determine the current rates for early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding until six months in your area. Discuss with you team the challenges and approaches to improve this.

Resources:
http://www.who.int/topics/breastfeeding/en/
https://medlineplus.gov/breastfeeding.html

https://www.womenshealth.gov/breastfeeding/making-decision-breastfeed


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