The Anakavur Process

World Breastfeeding Week Celebration in Perumbalai Village, Anakavur Block: A Report Sent in by Volunteers

The World Breastfeeding Week 2009 was celebrated in Perumbalai Village on the 6th August 2009 by Ms. Abirami, the Volunteer of the village. Abirami is one of the senior and committed volunteers of the Anakavur process. The event was attended by the following other volunteers as well: Ms. Selvarani, Ms. Selvakumari, Ms. Jayanthi, Ms. Gowri, Ms. Thangam, Mr. Muniyandi and Ms. Sathya.

There was good participation of pregnant women, lactating women, adolescent girls, members of children’s group and other village elders totaling to more than 45 persons. The event was held at the residence of Abirami. The volunteers had put up a number of charts, posters and diagrams providing all the essential information about the importance of breastfeeding the newborns within the first hour of birth, the importance of exclusive breastfeeding of children up to six months and the importance of starting complementary feeding after six months alongside of continuing breastfeeding up to two years of age of the child. All these posters were prepared in Tamil, the local language, such that the local women could read and understand them.
Volunteer Abirami welcomed all the local women who had turned up for the occasion. This was followed by self-introduction by the volunteers who had come for this event from different villages. Then, Muniyandi, the volunteer of Akkur, spoke about the Anakavur process by highlighting all the key areas of work and achievement in the Anakavur block.
C. M. Thangam, the volunteer of Cheyyatraivendran who spoke next explained the importance of breastfeeding and the significance of celebrating the breastfeeding week. She made the following points:
• The new born baby must be put to its mother’s breast within the first hour of its birth. This is very important to provide the baby with all the needed nutrients and to protect the baby from all infections.
• The infant must be continued on exclusive breastfeeding up to six months of age. The infant should not be fed anything else. Since the mother’s milk contains all the nutrients that the infant needs, it should be given only its mother’s milk up to six months.
• In the villages, there are certain other practices prevalent, such as, feeding the infant with donkey’s milk, feeding it with sugar syrup, feeding a local herbal paste called uraippan, etc. Such practices could lead to infections in the infant and prevent adequate breast milk being made available to the infant.
• To the extent that such substitution of breast milk takes place, the brain formation and the general growth and development of the child including psychological development could be hampered.
• After six months, complementary food must be introduced alongside continuation of breastfeeding up to two years of age of the child.
• Every child should be weighed every month in order to monitor its growth and general health, as weight is the only available and reliable indicator of the health of the child at the village level.
• Every child should be put through the entire schedule of all the doses of the different vaccines under the immunization programme.

H1N1 Virus:

Muniyandi intervened at this point to explain about the spread of H1N1 infection, popularly known as swine flu, at the global, national and state levels. Since the infection was spreading fast, he cautioned all the people assembled to take proper care to protect themselves by washing their hands and feet whenever they returned home and to report to a hospital whenever they developed any symptoms such as cold, fever, etc.

The programme then continued with the volunteers staging a skit on the theme of breastfeeding.
Based upon the information on the benefits of breastfeeding for the health of the child provided during the event including the skit that was performed, nine questions were framed and these were posed to the women assembled at the end of the event with a view to obtaining their feedback on the programme messages. All the participating women took part in this evaluation session quite keenly. Such of those who answered the maximum number of questions correctly were also presented with gifts. The conclusion is that most of the important messages did indeed reach the audience.
The following were the questions asked:
1. What is the recommended duration of exclusive breastfeeding to infants?
2. What is the recommended duration of continuing breastfeeding beyond six months?
3. When should complementary feeding be started?
4. Why should the child be breastfed within the first hour of birth?
5. Which is the earliest month of pregnancy for purposes of registration?
6. How many ante-natal check ups should a pregnant woman ideally have?
7. What is the most reliable indicator of the healthy growth of a child, available at the village level?
8. What are the four main areas where Anakavur work is focused upon?
9. What should be the minimum birth weight of a child?

This event has been entirely conceived, designed and delivered by the volunteers of Anakavur Block without any outside resource participation. And, it went off very well indeed! The participation of local women in the event was excellent. The event has had the desired impact among the audience of the village, which is again an indicator of the impact of the sustained efforts put in by all in to the Anakavur process!