Call for mother's milk at work

By ANGELA GREGORY Health reporter

The Public Health Association is calling for more work-based childcare facilities following research that shows breastfeeding can reduce breast cancer.

A British study of data from 30 countries published in the Lancet medical journal has shown that the relative risk of breast cancer decreased by 4.3 per cent for every year of breastfeeding, as well as by 7 per cent for each birth.

Association member Dr Annette Beasley said the study estimated that if women in developed countries breastfed their children for an extra six months there would be a 5 per cent decrease in breast cancer cases.

Dr Beasley said that while breastfeeding was promoted in New Zealand, it was not adequately supported.

She said more workplaces needed to make it possible for women to breastfeed their babies for longer, especially for low-socioeconomic workers under more financial pressure to return sooner.

That would mean childcare facilities with areas for breastfeeding and milk-expressing.

Dr Beasley said social attitudes also had to change. Breastfeeding in public was still not always acceptable, and there was some aversion to women who breastfed children aged over 1 year.

"There is a lack of a climate that really supports women to meet their breastfeeding goals."

Dr Beasley believed many women would breastfeed longer if they could.

Business New Zealand executive director Anne Knowles said most women preferred to finish breastfeeding before they returned to work.

Those who wanted to carry on had the option of expressing milk at work.

"I think most workplaces have sufficiently hygienic conditions and privacy for that to occur."

Mrs Knowles said New Zealand offered women up to 12 months' parental leave - much greater than the minimum 14 weeks recommended by the International Labour Organisation.

The study said it was unrealistic to expect substantial reductions in breast-cancer incidence to be brought about by women returning to the pattern of childbearing and breastfeeding that typified most societies until a century or so ago.

However, if in the future the mechanism of the protective effect of breastfeeding on breast cancer was understood, it might be possible to prevent breast cancer by mimicking the effect of breastfeeding therapeutically or in some other way.

Meanwhile, important reductions in breast cancer incidence could be achieved if women considered breastfeeding each child for longer than they did now.

nzherald.co.nz/health