Breastfeeding Week Celebration Report
Lucknow Academy of Peditrics
Breastfeeding Week Celebration by Lucknow Academy of Paediatrics was exceptionally grand and done whole-heartedly in the endeavour to promote, support and protect breastfeeding.
Preparation: The planning of celebration started around a month before the actual week. After extensive deliberation and brain storming on the subject, our President Prof R Ahuja, Secretary Dr Abhishek Bansal, Treasurer Dr Tribhuvanesh Yadav, the chief adviser Dr Piyali Bhattacharya, co-ordinators Dr Salman Khan & Dr Utkarsh Bansal, drafted the whole framework for celebration of Breastfeeding week by our Branch.
Approach: “LATCH” approach was drafted which formed the soul of celebration of the week.
Learning and Knowledge sharing among all,
Awareness spreading about benefits of breast milk and management of breastfeeding problems,
Team up with all health care professional,
Colostrum advantage to all babies & initiation of early feeding,
Hashtags using Media in all formats to reach the Society.
Making a unanimous and unique approach helped us to spread a uniform message throughout district of Lucknow.
Nodal Persons: Paediatricians from both public and Private sector from all corners of Lucknow, after dividing our city into different zones and surrounding sub urban zones of Barabanki, Sitapur and Rae Bareli, were chosen as Nodal persons for conducting activity at their own hospitals and Clinic and nearby area. This was specially designed in a way to percolate every area of the city with the message we all wished to spread. All the nodal officers again galvanized other colleagues, obstetricians, healthcare workers and medical students in their vicinity to make a strong team approach and made it a massive movement.
Communication: Every pediatrician made it a point to talk about the benefits of breastfeeding during their ward rounds, OPD visits and immunization sessions. We made a special emphasis to provide colostrum advantage to every baby. We also collaborated with our obstetrician colleagues in our campaign, they took up the task to inform the pregnant ladies & mothers the importance of breastmilk during the ANC and PNC visits. This will make all mothers listen the same voice throughout her medical visits and will anchor breastmilk as the best choice for the babies in their mind.
Awareness: Banner, Stamp, Pamphlet and Poster campaigns formed the basis of Awareness to all the sections of society. Around 40 places all over Lucknow including the 10 medical colleges acted as nodal centres where throughout the week breastfeeding celebration banner was displayed. All prescriptions were stamped with the message “Breastfeeding for Healthy Babies and Happy Mother” strategically translated in Hindi so that the message could be disseminated far and wide. Distribution of pamphlets giving information in Hindi about the benefits and management of breastfeeding were highlight part of this campaign. We distributed 20000 pamphlets in the entire week. As we printed them in Hindi, it allowed us to reach all sections of the society with ease of delivering our message with a better understanding of all. Large printouts of such IEC material were made and displayed in OPDs of all pediatricians and hospitals, so that the movement would not end with the week but continue forever. We organized poster competitions for nursing students in many nursing colleges to engage them in the process. With their enthusiastic participation in the event, it allowed them to understand the importance of breastfeeding.
Involvement: As our LATCH approach aimed team building, we tried to involve all the paramedical and support staff in making them equipped with knowledge about the benefits of breastfeeding and skills to deal with common breastfeeding problems. Paramedical training acquired paramount importance in our program as we hope to achieve far-reaching results with it. Pediatricians individually addressed around 3000 ASHA, ANMs, nursing and helping staff of various institutions and private clinics. Role-plays, poster competition, slogan competition and demonstration formed the basis of involving the nursing and para-medics. All the healthcare staff got involved with great spirit and made it a real celebration for all. We were able to involve lot of NGOs with us, like Rotary Club, Inner Wheel Club, World Vision India, Child Line with us. They religiously became part of the campaign and helped us to spread the message to the most remote areas.
Celebration: At Lucknow, our celebrations are always grand, and so we did in the Breastfeeding week. Numerous CMEs were organized at all medical colleges throughout the week. Baby shows were organized by private practioners to honour the efforts of mothers and families who had sustained exclusive breastfeeding for their infants. Quiz competitions were held to refresh the knowledge of mothers, medical students, nursing students and resident doctors. A Mega CME on Breastfeeding for all members of the academy was organized to talk about the breastfeeding role in sustained development goals, LATCH score, Kangaroo Mother Care and sharing of experiences. Nodal persons were honoured for their untiring efforts in the event.
Media: We utilized the power of the fourth pillar of democracy to reach every household and distant places with our messages “Breastfeeding Foundation of Life & Breastfeeding Nourishment for Life”, “Breastfeeding for Healthy Babies and Happy Mother” and “Breastfeeding the Foundation of Life”. The media endorsed our movement with open hands and we had space in around 4-5 newspapers daily in the entire week. Apart from print media we reached every home by giving talks on All India Radio/FM Radio channels almost every day. Our senior pediatricians were invited as panellist in TV programs also and the transmission of these programs was almost on daily basis to give the message to the community that breastfeeding is best feeding. The enthusiasm and warm appreciation of media personals towards our program boosted our spirits a lot.
Society: No program is successful until it penetrates the farthest corners of the society, reaching the most poor, illiterate and downtrodden. Success is measured by the change it brings in the attitude and practices of the masses. We reached the slums and did awareness camps there. We did road rallies with posters, banners and slogans to catch attention of general public about the benefits of breastmilk. We were in different areas of Lucknow to distribute pamphlets about the importance of breastfeeding for the baby, mother and society. We talked with people to clear the myths and problems faced. Role-plays were done in the community to propagate the message in a lively interesting format.
Social Media: We unleashed the power of social media in our campaign. We used Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram to propagate our vision, specially to the educated class. We used to post information and pamphlets on social media sites with hashtags “#WBW2018 #WABA #IAP #LAP #LATCH #BPNI”.
One of our senior members, Dr Pradeep Kumar Shukla wrote an excellent poem in Hindi on the holy elixir breastmilk titled “Kewal maa ka doodh pilana”. This has been widely appreciated by entire Pediatric fraternity across India, extensively circulated on social media, became an eye-candy and has been put up on the official website of IAP to be read by all.
E Bulletin: We published a daily E newsletter during the Breastfeeding week, which gave scientific facts about breastmilk and feeding practices to disseminate, and afresh knowledge among the fraternity along with pictures of our daily activities. This e bulletin was spread throughout the country through emails and whatsapp group and it helped us to spread the message of Breastfeeding across the whole Indian Pediatricians.
Breastfeeding Week celebration under the aegis of LAP was so tremendous that its theme “Breastfeeding for Healthy Babies and Happy Mother” and “Breastfeeding Foundation of Life & Breastfeeding Nourishment for Life” will continue to echo in the hearts of all members of the academy and we made a strong resolution to continue to spread the message throughout the year and to come back next year with renewed vigour.
Medical Colleges /Institutions who actively participated :
Hind Institute of Medical Sciences 1 & 2 ,King Gorges Medical University, Eras Lucknow Medical College, Sanjay Gandhi Post graduate institute ,Carrier Institute of Medical Sciences, Mayo Institute of Medical Sciences, Saraswati Medical college,TSM Medical college, Command Hospital, Vivekananda Polyclinic and Institute of Medical sciences,Members of branch of IAP,Dr R Ahuja, Dr Abhishek Bansal , Dr Tr Yadav, Dr Piyali Bhattacharya, Dr Mala Kumar, Dr Amit Rastogi Dr Atul Rastogi Dr Salman ,Dr Utkarsh Bansal, Dr Sarika Gupta Dr Shitanshu Srivastava ,Dr Chhavi Nanda , Dr Vijay Bhardwaj Col Thapar, Dr Sanjeev, Dr Niranajn K Singh, Dr Neeta Bhargava, Dr Utkarsh, Dr Anurag Katiyar, Dr PK Shukla, Dr Anoop Bajpai,Dr Ashutosh Verma, Dr DC Pandey Dr AC Chawla, Dr SK Rai; Dr M Pandey, Dr Manas, Dr Sanajy Niranjan, Dr Shrish Bhatnagar, Dr KK Yadav, Dr Arvind Shukla, Dr Sanjay sehta, Dr MW Beg, Dr Zaigham Abbas, Dr Ajay Srivastava,Dr Nidhi Nasaria, Dr Mridula Srivastava, Dr Ekansh Rathoria, Dr. Narendra Rai, Dr. Nyay Bhai Gupta,Dr Ritu Shroff
