Reflections on World Breastfeeding Week (1st — 7th August 2024).
August 1–7 is World Breastfeeding Week. Did you know there is a whole week dedicated to creating awareness and celebrating breastfeeding? The theme for this year is “Closing the Gap, Breastfeeding Support for All”. Now, even though I have done quite a bit of work with breastmilk and how it benefits infants born to women living with HIV, I have been procrastinating about writing a blog post, but it felt a bit different from writing a scientific abstract or a scientific manuscript. I believe it is important for scientists and researchers to communicate your nerdish science stuff to your community. In research and academia, we are encouraged to write, and the popular phrase that hovers over us is “publish or perish”. It is fair to say that several early career researchers focus on writing and publishing in academic or scientific journals. These are great achievements and publishing in high-impact factors journals can boost your career, however, I challenge us to find ways to communicate our research and academic work with other non-scientists. That’s how we can promote literacy in more complex topics like vaccinations and reach out to policymakers in our communities. For example, I shared this piece with my mum, who is a nonscientist, and asked for her feedback. Blogs like this can help you share your stories and your work with colleagues and beyond!
I was approached by our lovely communications and social media team at my institute, the International Research Centre of Excellence (IRCE) at the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN) to prepare a short post on our social media handles celebrating World Breastfeeding Day 2024. I realized that I have spent years out of my 15-year career exploring ways to keep both mothers and their infants healthy by exploring what helps them the most—exclusive breastfeeding, immunization, maternal vaccination, adherence to HIV drugs, social determinants, and so on. In 2024, through the first-ever birth cohort (enrolling pregnant women and then their infants after birth) in Nigeria, Prof Alash’le Abimiku (who is my mentor and boss) together with colleagues, showed that exclusive breastfeeding among women living with HIV who are on antiretrovirals (ARVs) is more beneficial for their infants’ growth and breaks HIV transmission when compared to mixed feeding. These findings from a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) grant contributed to the global policy changes as exclusive breastfeeding is now recommended to women living with HIV who are on ARVs. This is the beauty of how research and evidence-based practice can influence policies nationally and internationally. The team also showed that mixed feeding in infants (having both breastmilk and formula milk) may increase the infant’s risk of HIV exposure and infection.
With more research and the work done in birth cohorts (INFANT study →2013–2017 and BEAMING study → -2019-2024), we have explored how breastfeeding can help keep an infant healthy in our African setting. Among the key findings are:
a) Breastfeeding is the best way to provide all the baby needs to grow healthy.
b) Breastmilk contains important ingredients to help infants fight against diseases early in life including diarrheal diseases, which kill many infants and children globally.
c) Women living with HIV are encouraged to exclusively breastfeed their infants until they are 6 months as this will help protect their infants from HIV transmission and other infections.
Interested in reading some of the work we have published? here are some direct links:
1. https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/spectrum.03190-23
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30134300/
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28074312/
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31649662/
The original article was published on Medium (https://medium.com/@skosawe/its-world-breastfeeding-week-5eb5f7726e7a).
Sophia Osawe is a Senior Manager and the Lead of the Quality Assurance Unit with the International Research Centre of Excellence (IRCE) at the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN).
Contact email: sosawe@ihvnigeria.org
Thumbnail image: from Shutterstock (Young African-american Mother Holding Her Newborn Stock Vector (Royalty Free) 664776574 | Shutterstock)