After championing the Maternity Bill a few years ago, a 31-year-old Panvel woman is now gathering support through another online petition, this time for a mother’s right to breastfeed her baby for the first feed after birth. The petition, which already garnered 42,000 signatures, urges hospitals not to feed formula to newborns without parental consent.
Jincy Varghese, an engineer, first took up an online petition on change.org in October 2016 to support the Maternity Bill. That petition garnered 17,341 signatures. “The Bill was first spoken of in December 2015, and was passed in the Rajya Sabha in August 2016. But it took time for it to get passed in the Lok Sabha. My petition was to push for the Bill, and Maneka Gandhi had personally replied to my petition. The Bill was finally signed into law by the President on March 28, 2017, and came into effect on April 1, 2017,” Ms. Varghese said.
The experience spurred Ms. Varghese on to tackle another issue faced by new mothers.
Personal experience
She said, “When my baby was born, he was kept in the NICU as doctors needed to observe his sugar levels. During that time, he was fed formula milk. The hospital did not take my consent for this; I wasn’t even informed about it, or I would never have allowed it to happen. There was a milk bank in the hospital, and my baby could have been fed human milk during the early hours of his life,” Ms. Varghese said.
When she later joined a breastfeeding support group for Indian mothers on Facebook, she realised that what had happened to her was a rampant practice across the country.
“Especially when a mother is recovering after a C-section, or when a baby is in the NICU, many hospitals feed the baby formula without informing the parents. Our government has spent crores on advertising the importance of breastfeeding. But hospitals, especially private ones, make a tonne of money because they get discounted formula milk tins from pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, parents are given a tin of formula to take home, and the cost is added to the medical bill,” Ms. Varghese said.
She said that usually, hospitals ask for a patient’s consent for every little thing, making him or her sign several documents. “And yet, the doctors choose to give babies formula over human milk without parental consent.”
Hoping for action
With August 1 to 7 being observed as World Breastfeeding Week, Ms. Varghese hopes that the government and lawmakers take note of her petition. “The government could start by first seeking parental consent before looking for breast milk alternatives and educating new parents on the challenges,” Ms. Varghese said.
Once it reaches 50,000 signatures, the petition will be forwarded to Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and State Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde.
Recently, a report by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation ranked India 56th among 76 countries in early initiation of breastfeeding.
