DOHA: The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has organized a training of trainers course on assessing the competency of healthcare providers on the baby-friendly hospital initiative.
The course is an essential part of implementing the baby-friendly hospital initiative, an initiative launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 1991 with the aim of protecting and promoting the health of pregnant women, new mothers and their children.
The course is designed to build the capacity of medical staff in all public and private hospitals in Qatar, by specialists and trainers certified by the Ministry of Public Health in the field of breastfeeding, to provide them with the necessary skills to support mothers and their babies in breastfeeding and to ensure that they are competent and have sufficient information and skills that enable them to apply them practically in health facilities.
The course provided a comprehensive competency verification toolkit to help hospitals and health centres assess staff competency for international accreditation as a baby-friendly facility.
The MoPH introduced the baby-friendly hospital initiative in 2016 to increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding of babies under six months old in Qatar, promote and support breastfeeding in health facilities that provide maternal and child services and ensure that mothers and newborns receive timely and appropriate care.
WHO and UNICEF have launched the baby-friendly hospitals initiative to help hospitals provide mothers with the information, confidence and skills to successfully start and continue breastfeeding by granting special accreditation to hospitals that are active in this area.
