World Breastfeeding Week 2025- Prioritize Breastfeeding: Create Sustainable Support Systems

1 August 2025

Highlights

August 1–7 marks World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) 2025, a time when families, health workers, policymakers, and communities around the world unite to celebrate and advocate for breastfeeding. This year’s theme, “Prioritize Breastfeeding: Create Sustainable Support Systems,” is a rallying cry to build enduring, equitable frameworks that support breastfeeding mothers and empower families. More than just a campaign, WBW is a global movement, a commitment to giving every child the healthiest start in life while investing in a sustainable future for our societies and planet.

Coordinated by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, World Breastfeeding Week has been observed annually since 1992. It commemorates the 1990 Innocenti Declaration, which recognized breastfeeding as a fundamental right for every child. In 2025, WBW aligns with WHO’s broader campaign “Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures,” which underscores the need for long-term support for women and babies throughout their breastfeeding journey, ensuring access to skilled counselling at all levels of care, strengthening the enforcement of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, creating enabling environments in homes, workplaces, and healthcare systems, expanding legal protections and social support for breastfeeding mother.

In recent years, the global health community has strengthened its commitment to breastfeeding. At the 78th World Health Assembly, countries adopted two key resolutions: Extending the Comprehensive Implementation Plan on Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition to 2030 (Resolution WHA78.24), setting more ambitious targets and process indicators and regulating the digital marketing of breastmilk substitutes (Resolution WHA78.18), recognizing the growing influence of online platforms and influencers promoting formula milk. These resolutions aim to safeguard breastfeeding from commercial influence and promote sustainable nutrition strategies. The digital age has introduced new challenges to breastfeeding promotion, making regulatory vigilance more important than ever. Led by WHO and UNICEF, the Global Breastfeeding Collective is a partnership of governments, civil society organizations, and development partners committed to increasing investment in breastfeeding programmes, enacting and enforcing the Code of Marketing and related WHA resolutions, securing paid family leave and workplace breastfeeding policies, scaling up the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding in all maternity facilities.

Sri Lanka stands out globally as a breastfeeding success model. According to the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi), 90% of mothers initiate breastfeeding within the first hour of birth while 82% exclusively breastfeed for the first six months (2019 data). Sri Lanka earned a Green status in 2020, the highest possible rating, based on its strong policies, programmes, and breastfeeding outcomes. The country’s achievements are rooted in a sustained commitment to breastfeeding promotion and protection. The Sri Lankan Code for Promotion of Breastfeeding was introduced in 1981 and revised in 1998 and 2002, aligning with WHO’s International Code, The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) was launched in 1992, with De Soysa Hospital for Women as the first to be certified, followed by 84 other specialist hospitals, Lactation Management Centres, established in 2005, offering vital support for mothers in health facilities, generous maternity leave policies in the public sector provide up to 252 days of combined paid and unpaid leave, facilitating continued breastfeeding.

The WHO Sri Lanka has been a longstanding partner to the Ministry of Health, providing critical support in, strengthening health systems to enable optimal breastfeeding practices, supporting the development of the Field Newborn Care Guide, building staff capacity in newborn and maternal care, offering technical support in the establishment of Mother-Newborn Care Units (MNCUs) to provide care for small and sick newborns while promoting maternal involvement and breastfeeding and supporting assessments of national programmes such as the Mother Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (MBFHI), including MBFHI implementation reviews. The upcoming National Breastfeeding Week celebrations in August 2025 will feature the release of findings from the BFHI assessment, with recommendations to guide the next phase of breastfeeding promotion efforts and strengthening breastfeeding counselling support frameworks to prioritize breast feeding in Sri Lanka.

Future Steps

WHO Sri Lanka will continue to support Ministry of Health national priorities by, generating local evidence through rapid assessments and service delivery evaluations, strengthening community engagement and support systems for breastfeeding mothers, enhancing capacity-building efforts for health providers at all levels and advancing advocacy for working women, ensuring that policies and workplace environments support continued breastfeeding.

As World Breastfeeding Week 2025 calls to “Prioritize Breastfeeding: Create Sustainable Support Systems,” Sri Lanka stands as a beacon of what is possible with strong leadership, evidence-based policies, and cross-sector collaboration.