The Ministry of Health (MOH) represented by the Directorate General of Primary Health Care-Department of Nutrition organized today Sunday a training workshop on Baby-Friendly Health Institutions Initiative (BFHI) at the Holiday Inn Hotel with the participation of 22 nurses and Nutrition technicians from the Sultanate’s hospitals and health centers.

The 5-day training workshop aims at improving knowledge of the benefits of breastfeeding for health workers and community and assisting women overcome the barriers they face to successfully breastfeeding their babies. Most importantly, it revitalizes the BFHI by generating a new cadre of Baby Friendly Hospital and Centers assessors. The workshop is divided into three-major parts: identification of the problem, the baby friendly hospital initiative and the tools for assessment of hospitals and health centers; and the importance of the community with ways to increase community support, starting with Primary Healthcare Centers (PHC).

The workshop focuses on developing the assessor skills in sampling, interviewing, use of the assessment tools as presented in the WHO/UNICEF BFHI Assessment training course, and reporting. It moreover highlights the role of the PHC to increase community support for breastfeeding.

Notably, the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) was first launched in Oman by the MOH 25 years ago to promote and sustain exclusive breastfeeding.