International experts brought in to benefit the healthcare profession.

A very key contribution of BMSG(S) to breastfeeding promotion in this last decade has been the increasing inroads made in bringing healthcare professionals into the whole advocacy process. Since our inaugural seminar in 1991, when BMSG(S) brought in Profs. Derrick & Patrice Jelliffe, Dr Neil Campbell and Dr Mark Belsey, other breastfeeding experts brought in through BMSG(S) were Prof. Peter Hartmann (Australia), whose special interest was in the biochemistry of lactation (1995); Dr Marshall Klaus (USA), who studied the importance of touch in infants and the importance of touch to bonding and breastfeeding (1997); Roz Escott (Australia) from IBLCE, who addressed healthcare professionals on the anatomy of the baby's mouth for breastfeeding, and how bottles and pacifiers interfered with this (1999). The year 2000 was significant, when we invited Prof. Lawrence Gartner,University of Chicago (USA), and Sue Cox, Lactation Consultant from Tasmania, Australia to visit. Prof. Gartner's lecture to doctors attracted 105 doctors and some 200 nurses - the largest number of doctors we have managed to bring into a meeting on breastfeeding. Prof. Gartner's expertise on jaundice, and his high international standing in research made this a landmark visit. Hospital visits by both speakers benefited the doctors and nurses further. The most recent expert to visit was Prof. Lars Hanson (Sweden), an eminent immunologist who lectured on the amazing immunological benefits of breast milk and breastfeeding (2002).

Besides lectures to healthcare professionals, BMSG(S) also arranged for many of these experts to address parents at public meetings, and put in television and radio interviews for a number of them, to maximize exposure of their expertise to the public. The most important meetings BMSG(S) initiated along with many of these visits were the "Breastfeeding Consultations". The first was called by BMSG(S) in 1991, where key paediatricians, obstetricians and nursing directors from the main hospitals were invited to a closed-door consultation with our visiting experts. For the first time, hospital personnel were able to trade experiences on the breastfeeding scene in their respective hospitals, and tap the visiting expert for his suggestions. The five or six consultations we have had so far spawned a core group of healthcare professionals committed to the promotion of breastfeeding in their respective spheres. Since 1991, these have been organized and chaired by BMSG(S), until the last one in 2002, when Dr Lim Sok Bee, as Chairperson of the Singapore Breastfeeding Promotion Committee (SBPC), took over the chair.

A new chapter - Healthcare Professionals beginning to move Breastfeeding Advocacy

The Breastfeeding Consultation in 2000 with Prof Lawrence Gartner and Sue Cox was a turning point. Most of the Asian countries around us have a national committee spear-heading breastfeeding promotion. After 25 years, this was still done only at a mother-support group level in Singapore. Prof. Gartner recommended that Singapore form a national committee if we were to significantly impact the breastfeeding rates here. Following from the August 2000 consultation, BMSG(S) again initiated a meeting in January 2001, this time including representatives from related professional doctors' and nurses' associations, along with the hospital representatives and mother-support groups. The upshot of this historic meeting was a consensus among those present that a national committee was needed, and the Singapore Breastfeeding Promotion Committee was born, with Dr Lim Sok Bee, from KK Hospital's Neonatal Department as Chairman. The morning of the same day, a delegation from BMSG(S) met with Dr Lam Sian Lian, head of the Institute of Health, soon-to-be the Health Promotion Board, to share with her the proposed plans for a national breastfeeding committee. We mooted the need for a national breastfeeding survey, as Singapore had no comprehensive breastfeeding statistic to date. Dr Lam immediately undertook for Health Promotion Board to carry out such a survey, which was duly done in 2001, with SBPC representatives in every hospital lending enthusiastic support. The results of this national survey were made public in early 2005. In November 2003, SBPC was registered as a society, under the new name, Association for Breastfeeding Advocacy (Singapore) - ABAS. BMSG(S) continues to serve as secretariat for ABAS, and we still form the backbone for ABAS at this time. We can look forward to the day when doctors will increasingly come to the fore in this advocacy movement, and move breastfeeding to much greater heights than we can reach from the grassroots as a mother-support movement.

All in all, breastfeeding has come a long and painstaking way in thirty years in Singapore, but there is still a long way to go to see that all babies in Singapore come into their birthright to be nurtured on mothers' milk.

Wan Siew Kwun
Past President, BMSG(S)
March 2005

References

BMSG(S) Minutes and AGM Reports
Keeping Abreast, 1992-2005
SBMG Minutes and AGM Reports
Wan Siew Kwun, Current Trends in Breastfeeding in Singapore, Consumers' Bulletin, Feb. 1982
Wan Siew Kwun, BMSG(S) - a Report and History, Keeping Abreast, January 1992.
Wan Siew Kwun, The State of Breastfeeding in Singapore, Aug. 2000
Wong Hock Boon, Breast Feeding in Singapore, 1971.