Professional Toolkits > Hospitals

In Canada, the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is overseen by the Breastfeeding Committee for Canada.

The BFHI is a global program initiated in 1991 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in response to the Innocenti Declaration (1990). This program encourages and recognizes hospitals that offer an optimal level of care for mothers and infants. A Baby-Friendly hospital focuses on the needs of the newborns and helps mothers and families to give their infant the best possible start in life. This means that a Baby-Friendly hospital encourages and helps women to successfully initiate and continue to breastfeed their babies and therefore receives special recognition for having done so. Since the start of the BFH initiative, over 15,000 hospitals worldwide have received the Baby–Friendly designation.

The BFHI protects, promotes and supports breastfeeding through the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding developed by UNICEF and the World Health Organization. In order to achieve Baby-Friendly designation, every hospital and maternity facility must:

1. Have a written breastfeeding policy that is routinely communicated to all health care staff.
2. Train all health care staff in skills necessary to implement this policy.
3. Inform all pregnant women about the benefits and management of breastfeeding.
4. Help mothers to initiate breastfeeding within a half-hour of birth.
5. Show mothers how to breastfeed and how to maintain lactation even if they should be separated from their infants.
6. Give newborn infants no food or drink other than breast milk, unless medically indicated.
7. Practice rooming-in, allow mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours a day.
8. Encourage breastfeeding on demand.
9. Give no artificial teats or pacifiers (also called dummies or soothers) to breastfeeding infants.
10. Foster the establishment of breastfeeding support groups and refer mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic.

A Baby-Friendly hospital also adheres to the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (1981). The Code seeks to protect breastfeeding by ensuring the ethical marketing of breastmilk substitutes by industry. The Code includes these ten important provisions:

1. No advertising of products under the scope of the Code to the public.
2. No free samples to mothers.
3. No promotion of products in health care facilities, including the distribution of free or low cost supplies.
4. No company representatives to advise mothers.
5. No gifts or personal samples to health workers.
6. No words or pictures idealizing artificial feeding, including pictures of infants on the labels of products.
7. Information to health workers should be scientific and factual.
8. All information on use of breastmilk substitutes, including the labels , should explain the benefits of breastfeeding and all costs and hazards associated with artificial feeding.
9. Unsuitable products such as sweetened condensed milk should not be promoted for babies.
10. Products should be of a high quality and take into account the climatic and storage conditions of the country where they are used.

For more information about the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, and the Baby-Friendly Initiative in Canada as well as a list of Designated Baby Friendly hospitals and birthing centers please visit the Breastfeeding Committee for Canada.

The Ontario Breastfeeding Committee is the provincial contact for the Breastfeeding Committee for Canada: The National Authority on the Baby- Friendly Hospital Initiative.

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