The figures on breastfeeding in Pakistan shared at a recent media awareness and sensitisation workshop organised by the Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology in collaboration with UNICEF are troubling. Only about 20 percent of new-borns are breastfed within the first hour of life, while exclusive breastfeeding among infants under six months is roughly 48 percent.
These figures should prompt a serious conversation as to why following a practice that is natural, inexpensive and vital to child health remains so difficult for many mothers. Much of the problem appears to lie not with mothers themselves, but with the support systems around them.
Breastfeeding is too often treated as an individual maternal responsibility, while the social and institutional conditions that shape a mother’s ability to breastfeed receive far less attention. A woman who has just given birth may need counselling, encouragement from her family, quality maternity care and sufficient time to establish breastfeeding. Working women, meanwhile, need adequate maternity protections as well as safe and suitable facilities for expressing and storing breast milk. Without such support, public exhortations to “breastfeed” are barely more than unrealistic advice, with serious health consequences.
Nida Mohsen (Islamabad)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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