Australia has failed to meet a target of 50 per cent of all babies being exclusively breastfed until they are six months old, prompting calls for action to lift breastfeeding rates.
The 2025 target is the primary objective of the National Breastfeeding Strategy: 2019 and beyond, but most recent data, which is from 2022, put the national rate at only 38 per cent while WA lags even further behind at 30 per cent.
Globally Australia has been ranked third lowest out of 100 countries for its policies and programs to improve child nutrition through optimal feeding practices, including breastfeeding.
Dr Marnie Rowan, a WA GP practising breastfeeding medicine, said it was recognised universally that breastfeeding provides extensive benefits for infants and mothers.
“Exclusive breastfeeding, defined as the intake of no other food or fluids except breast milk for the first six months, is recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO),” she said. “Following this period, the introduction of family foods alongside continued breastfeeding is advised for up to two years and beyond.”
Research has shown breastfeeding doesn’t just produce milk but changes its composition over time to meet the child’s nutritional, immunological and developmental needs, according to The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
It protects infants against infections and sudden infant death syndrome and has other associated health benefits spanning into adolescence and adulthood, such as better cognitive development and reduced risk of diabetes and asthma.
Breastfeeding mothers get benefits, too, including reduced bleeding after birth, helping to maintain a healthy weight, better mental wellbeing and reduced risk of future chronic conditions, like heart disease and breast and ovarian cancers.
Dr Rowan, who is also Board Chair of the Breastfeeding Medicine Network Australia/New Zealand (BMN ANZ), said the national breastfeeding strategy’s aimed for a “modest target … which has not been achieved”.
She said it was important to consider “systemic factors” rather than blaming individuals for not meeting their breastfeeding goals.
Dr Rowan said only a small number of women have physical or medical reasons which limit their capacity to produce enough breastmilk or directly breastfeed.
“The most common barrier to women reaching their breastfeeding goals is a lack of access to or poorly informed feeding support in the early postpartum,” she said.
King Edward Memorial Hospital is WA’s main maternity and women’s hospital where around 6500 babies are born every year.
KEMH data show that 95 to 97 per cent of women say they intend to breastfeed their baby but the rate of exclusive breastfeeding drops to between 57 and 60 per cent by the time they are discharged.
A North Metropolitan Health Service spokeswoman said KEMH manages babies with the most complex medical needs, including those born prematurely, in WA which means it also supports those with many complex feeding issues.
The Breastfeeding Centre of WA, which is based at KEMH, offers free publicly funded lactation support to all breastfeeding women in WA. In 2024-2025, it conducted 7910 outpatient sessions, saw 1125 KEMH inpatients and took 7350 calls on its helpline.
Demand for BCWA’s services is growing every year and there is currently around a two-week wait to see a lactation consultant.
The inability to spend enough time to properly help new mothers with lactation led midwife Brenda Munz to leave her job in a Perth hospital to set up her private midwifery and lactation support clinic, The Gentle Village in Stirling.
“I used to work night shifts, and the patient loads were ridiculously big. It went from eight to 20 patients each if we consider mother and baby,” she said. “We just had to do the bare minimum, get through and answer the call bell. The education and support disappeared.”
Ms Munz said her private lactation consultations can take one to two hours which was not possible on hospital wards.
“The first three days are the most crucial and if they’re in the public sector, they’re out and at home already. If they’re in the private sector, hopefully they’ve received that support but again, it comes down to staffing,” she said.
Ms Munz and her team see about 30 mothers and babies a week for antenatal classes, private midwifery care and lactation support for issues like milk supply, the baby’s latch, their weight gain and bottle feeding.
“I can tell when the hospitals are so busy and overwhelmed, because I get this influx of little fresh babies. It happens at least once a month,” she said. “We try and fit those little ones in as soon as possible, because it’s either going to be make or break their feeding journey.”
Ms Munz described WA’s breastfeeding rate – 8 per cent lower than the national average – down to even less support and no lactation consultants outside of Perth.
“We do lots of virtual consultations. I get mums from Bunbury and Busselton making the drive up and back in a day to see us,” she said.
Eliza Roads had an emergency caesarean section and needed intensive care treatment after the birth of her seven-month-old son Lachlan.
Lachlan was formula fed in hospital and only started breastfeeding properly when they were discharged after a week and went to see Ms Munz.
Despite their difficult start, the first-time mum wanted to initiate breastfeeding but said she wasn’t given the support to do so in hospital.
“The midwives just said you’re not going to get your milk in. You’ve got flat nipples and you’re just going to formula feed. I kept asking in the hospital if they would help me latch Lachlan, and they said there’s no point,” she said.
Ms Roads said if she hadn’t sought private lactation support “my breastfeeding journey would have ended before it even began”.
Dr Rowan said the Australian National Breastfeeding Strategy was an excellent document but said there were numerous areas to be addressed, including the provision of universal, timely, affordable and well-trained community support.
“Breastfeeding parents and babies need to be seen within two to three days to address acute feeding difficulties,” she said.
Dr Rowan said there was a lack of standardised midwifery and medical breastfeeding education and no consistent teaching in breastfeeding and lactation in GP, paediatric, obstetric and gynaecology training in Australia.
Alexandra Shanks, from the Australian Breastfeeding Association said we don’t know if breastfeeding rates were declining or improving because The Australian National Infant Feeding Survey, which was done for the first time in 2010, had not been repeated since.
“Targets are often missed when progress against them isn’t monitored and reported,” she said.
Australia scored just 33 out of 100 for its implementation of policies and programs from the WHO’s Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding in 2023, which was an improvement on its score of 25.5 in the previous report card in 2018.
The World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative ranks Australia third lowest – ahead of only Cape Verde and Libya – for its breastfeeding practices and performance on indicators of how breastfeeding is protected and supported.
A spokesman for the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing said over the next four years the Australian Government was allocating $8.9 million to fund the ABA’s breastfeeding helpline, and $6m to the Australian Red Cross to operate donor human milk banks for preterm babies.
The Government is also currently consulting on options to restrict infant formula marketing after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last year decided not to renew the voluntary code.
Ms Shanks said it was “important progress” that the Government had committed to introduce legislation “to end the confusing and misleading marketing of infant formula”.
Dr Rowan said formula marketing had been shown to “pathologise normal infant behaviour and undermine parental confidence in breastfeeding”.
Ms Munz said increased interventions in childbirth – inductions, caesarean sections, vacuum deliveries – had a big effect on how a baby feeds and wasn’t being recognised enough.
“We’re not seeing how we’re doing a disservice to breastfeeding mothers and babies,” she said. “We value the concept of it, but we’re not seeing how we’re also impacting it.”
