Knowledge and attitudes of Lebanese women towards Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative practices

Abstract

Background The World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund launched the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to encourage best infant breastfeeding practices immediately after birth. In Lebanon, few hospitals are currently accredited as Baby Friendly. Aim To assess the knowledge of Lebanese women of BFHI steps, and to explore their attitudes towards Baby Friendly Hospitals, Skin-to-Skin Contact and Kangaroo Care practices. Methods A cross-sectional survey of a random sample of healthy pregnant women from Lebanon’s six governorates. Results The mean (SD) age of the participants (N = 517) was 28.6 (4.7) years. Most participants were unfamiliar with the terms Baby Friendly hospital (93.7%), skin-to-skin contact or kangaroo care (75%), or were inadequately instructed on how to initiate (54.2%) or continue (46.2%) breastfeeding. However, when provided with information about the benefits of BFHI practices, most mothers (> 90%) stated that they would deliver in Baby Friendly hospitals. About 68.4% of mothers refused to give donor human milk to their sick premature infants because of religious beliefs. Knowledge of Baby Friendly hospitals was significantly associated with university education (p = 0.029), higher monthly income (p = 0.042), and previous experiences of skin-to-skin contact (p<0.001), rooming in (p = 0.037), or breastfeeding support (p = 0.036). Conclusion There is a need for national awareness campaigns that address both the numerous advantages of the BFHI practices and Lebanese women’s knowledge gaps about these practices. Such knowledge will help scale up the implementation of BFHI practices in hospitals in. © 2020 Oueidat et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.