Nearly half of infants under 6 months not exclusively breast-fed

The 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS), report says that nearly half (47.4 percent) of children aged 0 to 5 months in Ghana are not being exclusively breastfed; highlighting a significant gap in exclusive breast-feeding practices in the country.

The practice has remained relatively unchanged over the past two decades – increasing marginally by 0.8 percentage points between 2003 (46.6 percent) and 2022 (47.4 percent).

Additionally, the Ghana Statistical Service’s (GSS) 2022 GDHS indicates that although breastfeeding in the country is near universal – with 96.8 percent of children born in the two years preceding the survey having been breast-fed – the initiation and duration of exclusive breastfeeding fall short of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommendations.

The WHO recommends that children should initiate breastfeeding within the first hour of birth and be exclusively breast-fed for the first 6 months of life.

The survey also found that 41.8 percent of children born in the two years preceding the 2022 GDHS did not start breastfeeding within the first hour of life.

It cited three regions including Greater Accra, 56.2 percent; Ahafo, 56.1 percent; and Eastern, 51.7 percent, as regions where more than half the children did not start breastfeeding within the first hour.

It also cited regions such as Bono East, 29.4 percent and Volta, 31.6 percent as those with the lowest percentage that did not initiate breastfeeding within the first hour.

“Nationally, the median duration for exclusive breastfeeding was 2.9 months. The Western North Region had the shortest median duration for exclusive breastfeeding of one month followed by Western (1.2 months) and Greater Accra (1.4 months) regions.

Half of the 16 regions had a median duration for exclusive breastfeeding of less than three months. The Savannah Region had the longest median duration for exclusive breastfeeding (4.7 months) followed by the Volta Region (4.4 months),” the survey further revealed.

World Breastfeeding Week is commemorated annually during the first week in August to highlight the importance of breastfeeding and promote access to breastfeeding support and opportunities. The theme for 2024 is ‘Closing the Gap: Breastfeeding Support for All’, emphasising the need to enhance breastfeeding practices across the nation.