1st Philips Avent Awareness and Health Forum 2009 and benefits of breastfeeding

Philips Avent is inviting all mothers and mothers-to-be to join them in a morning educational networking class promoting the current practices and benefits of breastfeeding led by professional midwives.

Furthermore Philips Avent are inviting the medical body Obstetricians, Gynecologists, Midwives, Lactation Consultants, Pediatricians and Neonatologists to join them for an afternoon session led by internationally recognized speakers from the health sector presenting the latest research findings about breastfeeding: Prof. Alan Lucas- Institute of Child Health, London; Dr. Mary Fewtrell- Institute of Child Health, London.

The forum will stress on the health impact of human milk in infant nutrition and will highlight an evidence-based approached to human milk provision for high risk infants and infant nutrition clinic.

The presentations will review the following:

• The importance of early nutrition and the recent focus on its impact on short and long term health - including cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2diabetes
• The importance of human milk, especially for high risk infants
• The scientific evidence available to support different methods for maximizing breast milk production in mothers whose infants are unable to exclusively breast-fed, including the use of pharmacological agents and breast pumps
• The role of donor breast milk when maternal breast milk is not available or insufficient to meet the infant's requirements, including the short- and long-term health effects of donor milk compared to maternal breast milk
• New developments in lacto-engineering and their implications for neonatal care.

Both sessions will highlight the benefits of breastfeeding.

Benefits of attending:

• Learn about the current evidence on the importance of early nutrition on short term morbidity and long term health and development - including cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes
• Be able to describe the short and long-term health benefits for human milk in high risk infants
• Gain awareness of the differences between maternal breast milk, and donor milk from an unrelated donor
• Learn about the likely differences in clinical and health outcomes with maternal breast milk and donor breast milk and understand the available scientific evidence for each
• Increase awareness on the scientific evidence supporting different methods to enable mothers to produce and provide more breast milk for their infant when the infant is unable to breast-feed.