By Adama Makasuba
Bwiam General Hospital has been recognized as a Baby Friendly Hospital by the National Nutrition Agency (NaNA) for respecting breastfeeding and nutrition policy.
This comes as the Agency launched a nationwide joint monitoring tour to hospitals and health centers across the country to help in coaching and mentoring health officers on nutrition and breastfeeding policy.
Speaking to Musa Dahaba, senior prgramme officer of the National Nutrition Agency, he thanked the nurses and doctors of the hospital for their commitment in ensuring the hospital abide by the policy of healthy nutrition and breastfeeding.
“With what we have seen so far, I would say we are very pleased and we are very happy because as you can see, we have gone to the post-natal ward, labor ward security ward, and we actually seen very impressive and we have interviewed some of the mothers and some of the nurses,” he disclosed.
He noted that they have seen the policy that they have developed for the implementation as a guiding principle to the implementation of BFHR in this facility which is on display in almost every facility in the hospital. This he described as very important/
According to him, his office doesn’t do fault-finding but rather they do coach and mentoring finding in a bid to ensure that hospitals and health centers with the officers are well equipped with nutrition and breastfeeding policy.
“Over these years they have being expanding and at least they have something to spend. In most areas to get a facility is a problem, so sometime in 2019 when we have some fund, we actually assigned ourselves to four facilities and said we are going to ensure that we work toward seeing that this facility become a baby friendly facility,” he said.
Alieu Kujabi, principal programme officer for the National Nutrition Agency, also said the tour seeks to find out whether certain nutrition is respected in hospitals and health centers across the country to ensure that those gaps are closed. He added that his office has also trained some health officers at the Bwiam General Hospital.