Reaching mothers and training counsellors.

In 1979, the Swedish breastfeeding promotion group, Amningjelpen, took an interest in exploring how they could help promote the cause in Singapore. Maudhe Hedstrom and Britta Hejdenberg visited Singapore for first-hand information. At that time, their group had 700 members, of whom 350 were counselling members. Their Central Administrative Body received a yearly grant of 25,000 Swedish crowns from the Swedish government for their work. They donated some $80,000 to SBMG, the bulk of which was spent in making a film, "The Second Link". Unfortunately, the film was not well made, and did not have much public appeal. Opportunities to educate mums-to-be on the importance of breastfeeding came through invitations to take the breastfeeding segment of antenatal classes in private hospitals like Mount Alvernia, Thomson Medical Centre, and later Gleneagles Hospital. There were occasional opportunities to address mothers in the polyclinics. SBMG also held public talks monthly, often using community centres and libraries as venues. Prof. Wong also invited the Group to speak to fourth or fifth year medical students on their paediatric rotation. Initially, speakers for talks were invariably the well-informed and vocal expatriate members. From the early 1980s, a small number of local mothers began to emerge to gradually take on a bigger role in the running of SBMG. Breastfeeding support in Singapore owes its roots to the expatriate community here in the 1970s, and while it was a very healthy sign that local mothers were slowly coming to the helm, we must never forget the wonderful contribution put in by our expatriate friends.

1981 is important for breastfeeding because the 34^th World Health Assembly adopted the WHO International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. Singapore was one of the signatories. The WHO Code lays down much stricter controls on the infant formula industry compared to our own SIFECS Code, established in 1979. Singapore chose to continue with our own Code, which made hardly a dent in the infant formula industry.

From the beginning, SBMG had been offering breastfeeding counselling by phone to mums in need. Counsellors' numbers were simply printed on the brochures we distributed. It was actually quite disruptive to counsellors' home lives. Counsellors advised from their own experience. We did not have formal Counsellors' Training until 1983, when we put together a simple training package based on the Swedish "Twenty Questions". This was to evolve through the years into the training scheme we use today.