Elkhorn, Wis. – Aurora Lakeland Medical Center is marking World Breastfeeding Week – Aug. 1-7 – by celebrating its commitment to establishing a baby-friendly way for mothers to nurse their children. This year’s theme for the week is “Breastfeeding, Just 10 Steps the Baby-Friendly Way.”

The Innocenti Declaration in 1990 called upon the world to fully implement the Ten Steps in all maternities by 1995. Twenty years later, more than 152 countries have baby-friendly hospitals. They have implemented the Ten Steps, and, with the addition of relevant parts of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, they have also helped to resist the promotion of commercial infant formula to health care practitioners and the public.

Hospitals that have implemented the Ten Steps are known as Baby-Friendly, a title Aurora Lakeland Medical Center is proud to have earned from the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative. The 10 steps that Aurora Lakeland Medical Center has implemented to provide a Baby-Friendly environment as established by the World Health Organization and UNICEF include:

• Having a written breastfeeding policy that is routinely communicated to all health care staff;
• Training all health care staff in skills necessary to implement this policy;
• Informing all pregnant women about the benefits and management of breastfeeding;
• Helping mothers initiate breastfeeding within an half-hour of birth;
• Showing mothers how to breastfeed, and how to maintain lactation even if they should be separated from their infants;
• Giving newborn infants no food or drink other than breast milk unless medically indicated;
• Practicing rooming in, or allowing mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours a day;
• Encouraging breastfeeding on demand;
• Giving no artificial teats or pacifiers (also called dummies or soothers) to breastfeeding infants; and
• Fostering the establishment of breastfeeding support groups and referring mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic.

Aurora Lakeland Medical Center implemented the Ten Steps in order to help women achieve their breastfeeding goals and will continue to promote implementation of these steps at additional hospitals so that more women can experience a true Baby-Friendly environment.

For more information, visit www.worldbreastfeedingweek.org/pdf/wbw_cal_eng.pdf

Aurora Health Care is a not-for-profit Wisconsin health care provider and a national leader in efforts to improve health care quality. Aurora offers services at sites in more than 90 communities throughout eastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

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Contact: Myrle Croasdale
Phone: 414 389-2210