During the workshop, attended by over 40 participants including paediatricians, nurses, midwives, nutritionists and representatives of civil society, stakeholders assessed national data alongside global best-practice guidelines from WHO and the United Nations Children's Fund. The review revealed fragmented interventions across sectors like health, labour, education and social welfare; weak enforcement of breastfeeding protection laws and maternity entitlements; lack of standardised counselling for mothers; and insufficient support for preterm and low-birth-weight infants, especially during emergencies or disease outbreaks.
Workshop participants drafted a shared vision for the policy: to ensure every infant receives optimal feeding from birth, with special attention to the most vulnerable, and to provide mothers and families with accurate, accessible guidance. Four strategic directions emerged as a roadmap for implementation between 2025 and 2030: strengthening governance and legal frameworks including regulation of marketing of breast-milk substitutes; improving health-system and community service delivery; building capacity among health workers; and integrating feeding practices across labour, education, social protection, disaster-management and media sectors.
The move aligns with Mauritius’s existing breastfeeding framework, the National Action Plan on Breastfeeding 2022–2027, yet marks a shift to a unified, multisectoral strategy. Past studies have shown that although breastfeeding initiation remains high in Mauritius, exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months has been far less common. One survey of 500 mothers found that while over 90 percent had breastfeeding experience, fewer than 20 percent had exclusively breastfed for the recommended six months and the average duration of exclusive breastfeeding was just over two months. Complementary feeding typically began at four to six months, often without reliable guidance on timing or nutrition.
Health experts assert that better IYCF practices could significantly reduce childhood morbidity, including risks of diarrhoea, respiratory infections and undernutrition, and lay a stronger foundation for growth and development. WHO’s global guidelines recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, followed by the introduction of safe and age-appropriate complementary foods while continuing breastfeeding up to two years or beyond.
With its new policy, Mauritius seeks to address barriers identified in national studies — from inconsistent counselling and insufficient maternity protections to inadequate support for working mothers and deficient regulation of infant formulas. The proposed legal and regulatory frameworks would enact provisions of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, aiming to shield mothers from aggressive marketing practices and ensure that substitutes are used only when medically necessary.
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