Although many health experts encourage women to breast-feed their newborns, many U.S. hospitals appear to do not so well when it comes to promoting breast-feeding among new mothers, a survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Thursday revealed.

New mothers should breast-feed their babies exclusively for the first six months of their life and continue breast-feeding with baby food as a supplement until at least the baby’s first birthday, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend. The World Health Organization and the American Academy of Family Physicians support the same thing.

Human milk is the best food for infants filled with nutrients and antibodies that encourage healthy development and protect against infection after birth, according to the CDC. Moreover, studies have shown that children who are fed formula have increased risks of ear and respiratory infections, obesity, diabetes, and even cancer.

In addition, breast-feeding was also found to protect mothers against breast cancer, ovarian cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.

Given the circumstances, hospitals should be the ones guiding new mothers to breast-feeding, but they appear to have maternity practices that do not encourage the process, the CDC survey found, after conducting a national maternity practices survey last year, which looked at seven areas involving the care of women who choose to breast-feed their newborns. The responses were rated on a scale of 0 to 100 points.

About 2,700 U.S. maternity hospitals and birth centers were included in the survey.

Overall, the hospitals score was 63 for key maternity practices in infant nutrition and care such as offering breast-feeding assistance, helping mothers establish contact with their newborn, offering breast-feeding support after hospital discharge or having trained personnel who could teach women how to breast-feed. The highest score for a hospital was 98, while the lowest was 12. However, the CDC did not reveal individual scores.
 
Deborah Dee, a CDC epidemiologist who co-authored the report said, “there is a lot of room for improvement,” the Associated Press Quotes her.

It’s vital for new mothers to get assistance while trying to breast-feed their newborns, as the process could be very frustrating, often involving nipple pain or misperception that they do not produce sufficient milk. That’s the moment when a mother decides what to do next: to continue breast-feeding her baby or to replace human milk with formula. Alternatively, providing formula, as some of the hospitals do is not the way to encourage a woman to choose what’s best for her and her baby.

The findings of the survey were published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.