by Q Radio News
This week marks World Breastfeeding Week (1-7 August 2017).
Q Radio recently reported that to celebrate World Breastfeeding Week; the Western Trust were encouraging everyone to show their support to mums who breastfeed in public.
Now Sinn Féin Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP, Michelle Gildernew has also shown her support.
The MP spoke at the beginning of World Breastfeeding week, and welcomed progress with the Public Health Agency's (PHA) Breastfeeding Welcome Here scheme.
The scheme now has 500 venues that provide supportive environments for breastfeeding mothers.
She said:
“Breastfeeding is recommended by the World Health Organisation. It is a perfectly natural thing to do with proven health benefits for both mothers and their babies.
“Unfortunately here in the north of Ireland we have one of the lowest rates of breastfeeding in the European Union.
“We need to continue to promote and normalise breastfeeding and remove the social stigma that is attached to breastfeeding, particularly in relation to breastfeeding in public places.
“While the Breastfeeding Welcome Here scheme is an important step in supporting breastfeeding mothers we also need the implementation of breastfeeding legislation that my colleague, former Health Minister Michelle O’Neill, tasked her department to develop.
"Breastfeeding legislation would ensure breastfeeding mothers have the right to feed their children with confidence and without interruption in a public place."
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