By Wendy Anders

The Costa Rican Social Security Bureau (CCSS) kicks-off breast-feeding awareness week with a series of activities this week to encourage women to breastfeed by educating them and their family members about the benefits of this practice. The week culminates in a walk on Friday through downtown San José to promote breastfeeding, and a quality and safe hospitalized birth.

According to UNICEF, the United Nations Fund for Children, 60 percent of Costa Rican women start breastfeeding their infant within one hour of birth, 33 percent exclusively breastfeed for six months (the Latin America average is 32 percent), and breast feeding beyond six months is practiced by 28 percent of women.

For optimal child growth and development infants “should be breastfed within one hour of birth, breastfed exclusively for the first six months of life, and continue to be breastfed up to 2 years of age and beyond,” states UNICEF on their website.

Costa Rica received international attention in January 2013 after a breastfeeding sit-in was held at Lincoln Plaza to protest treatment of a woman who was asked to move to a special room to breast feed her baby while shopping there. USA Today reported that shopping center managers were shocked when then Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla contacted them to complain about their actions saying women only need use special lactation rooms “if they wish,” and under law can breastfeed in public.

The CCSS opened its first human breast milk bank in May 2011 at the San Ramón Hospital in Alajuela province, according to the CCSS Facebook page.

The aim of the bank is to reduce the risk of infant mortality in hospitalized newborns or those who need formula but are intolerant to it, states the CCSS.

Breastfeeding awareness week this year begins with a free, public talk Monday at 9:30 am on nursing techniques and the types of support nursing women need at the San Juan de Dios hospital in downtown San José.

Other educational and public awareness activities will be held in Nicoya Guanacaste, and at other locations throughout the country.

The CCSS noted the following benefits to breastfeeding: it strengthens the emotional bond between a mother and her child; it increases a child’s immune defenses protecting them against diarrea, infections and allergies; it decreases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome; it decreases the risk of breast cancer and obesity in lactating mother; breast milk changes to adapt to the developmental needs of the child; the vast majority of children digest breast milk more easily than artificial formula; and breast feeding is the most hygienic form of infant feeding.