DIANA AL-JASSEM | ARAB NEWS

This was announced during a press conference to launch the 26 Club Forum for Child Health and Nutrition at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Jeddah.

Twenty-six experts in the field of infant health and safety gathered on Thursday to discuss health among Saudi children. The first session was held under the theme “Breast Feeding: The Ideal Diet.”

“We are planning to hold several meetings and workshops with experts and children consultants to raise awareness on the new health problems that affect Saudi children,” said Dr. Mohamed Sultan, Medical Director at Pfizer Nutrition.

“Our plan is to issue a number of recommendations in order to encourage parents to adopt a healthy lifestyle for their children. Every two months we will meet to decide what are the problems that affect Saudis the most. After three months of implementation, we will meet again to discuss the results.” According to Sultan, the club will work hard to educate pediatricians about the common problems affecting children.

“We chose breastfeeding as our main theme during the first meeting because we noticed that most Saudi women refuse to breastfeed. They are completely unaware of the benefits,” said professor Saad Al-Saedi of King Faisal Hospital for Research and Studies.

“We will discuss several topics such as esophageal reflux, diarrhea, obesity, diabetes and infectious diseases.”

Al-Saedi stressed that the club will cooperate with the Ministry of Health to organize several workshops and campaigns to raise awareness among women on the necessity of breastfeeding.

Latest studies confirmed that there are marked differences between breast milk and infant formula. In breast milk there are more than 300 nutrients, compared to only 75 in infant formula, said Sultan.

With instances of harmful infant formula milk appearing in Saudi pharmacies, parents still have difficulties making the right choice for their infants.

Such problems have encouraged the medical authorities to issue a list of approved products. The names and descriptions of safe infant formula will be issued next year.