The Health Service could slash the nation’s ‘staggering and frightening’ rates of childhood obesity if it did more to promote breastfeeding, the chairman of NHS England has said.
Breastfeeding has proven health benefits over formula milk and can cut childhood obesity by more than a quarter, Dr Penny Dash added.
But she claimed that England performs ‘exceptionally badly’ on sustained uptake compared with other countries and the NHS has ‘given up’ encouraging new mums to persevere.
Speaking at an event at the King’s Fund think-tank in London, she added: ‘To me, that’s like saying we’re not going to bother vaccinating people.’
The Infant Feeding Survey,
To provide well-rounded coverage and a breadth of insight across various events, we rely on contributions from several staff writers, each bringing their own area of expertise to our publication.