Protocol
It is with great pleasure that I welcome you all to the 2025 commemoration of World Breastfeeding Week, with the theme: “Prioritize Breastfeeding: Create Sustainable Support Systems.”
This theme underscores the vital connection between breastfeeding and environmental sustainability. Breastfeeding is a natural, renewable, and environmentally friendly food source with minimal environmental impact — unlike formula production which contributes significantly to carbon emissions and waste. The theme also emphasizes the urgent need to build strong, enduring systems that support breastfeeding at every level.
Breastfeeding remains the cornerstone of child survival, development, and maternal health. It is one of the most effective ways to ensure child health, strengthen immunity, and reduce the risk of malnutrition, infections, and non-communicable diseases. Despite its well-documented benefits, many mothers and caregivers still face barriers to initiating and sustaining optimal breastfeeding practices.
Creating an enabling environment for breastfeeding not only improves public health but also reduces the ecological burden associated with artificial feeding. This year’s commemoration calls on all stakeholders to collaborate in establishing resilient, sustainable systems that protect and promote breastfeeding.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends initiation of breastfeeding within the first hour of birth, exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, followed by introduction of safe and appropriate complementary foods after six months, with continued breastfeeding up to two years and beyond.
A truly sustainable support system for breastfeeding is one that adopts an all-of-society approach. It must ensure that every mother has access to all the resources, and encouragement needed to breastfeed successfully, from conception through early childhood. This support should begin in the antenatal period, with health workers trained to offer clear and skilled guidance. Continued support during hospital stays and especially after discharge is critical. Mothers need help to manage challenges, gain confidence, and balance breastfeeding with returning to work—particularly in the face of aggressive and unethical marketing of breastmilk substitutes (BMS).
Support systems must be inclusive, continuous, and well-integrated across generations, communities, and institutions—a “warm chain” of care and commitment to breastfeeding. To make breastfeeding sustainable, we must invest in sustainable systems of support: by training skilled counsellors, enforcing the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, and fostering breastfeeding-friendly environments at home, in health facilities, and in the workplace.
This year’s theme strongly aligns with the mission of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC)—to safeguard public health through the regulation and control of food and related products. We are committed to promoting breastfeeding by ensuring full compliance with the NAFDAC Regulations on the Marketing of Infant and Young Children Foods and other Designated Products and the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.
NAFDAC continues to strengthen monitoring mechanisms, build institutional capacity, and collaborate with State Governments and key partners to ensure compliance and accountability. In collaboration with our State Multi-sectoral BMS Technical Committees, we are intensifying awareness campaigns to equip caregivers and other stakeholders with accurate information and hold violators of the Code and National Regulations accountable. We are also scaling up efforts to curb unethical marketing, including digital marketing practices, that undermine breastfeeding.
As we mark World Breastfeeding Week 2025, the Call to Action is for all sectors — government, healthcare providers, employers, community leaders, and families — to join hands in building sustainable support systems that place breastfeeding at the heart of our national health, nutrition, and development agenda.
As NAFDAC, we will continue to prioritize breastfeeding and contribute to creating sustainable support systems, not just in words, but through bold, coordinated actions as the Authority designated by law to monitor and enforce the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk substitutes in Nigeria.
I wish everyone a productive and positively impactful capacity building session. Thank you.
Prof. Mojisola Christianah Adeyeye
Director General
NAFDAC
