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The EMRO
Arabic training materials on
"Infant and Young Child
Feeding Counselling"
Data from
countries in the Eastern
Mediterranean Region – even
those characterized by
relatively high
socio-economic development –
show that breastfeeding and
complementary feeding
indicators are still far
away from optimal,
acceptable levels. Any
effort to improve child
health in the Region should
seriously take into
consideration promotion of
breastfeeding as an
essential component of child
health. EMRO accords high
priority to infant and young
child feeding, including
breastfeeding, placing it at
the core of its child health
efforts.
In line
with this, CAH EMRO has
developed the Regional
Arabic training materials on
“Counselling on Infant and
Young Child Feeding” for
physicians, as these health
providers are influential
and can play a major role in
guiding, assisting and
supporting mothers and
families in child feeding.
These materials are based on
a major adaptation of the
original WHO training
materials on breastfeeding
counselling, which have been
expanded in scope to become
an integrated package on
infant and young child
feeding. This integrated
training package includes
not only updated information
on breastfeeding, but also
new chapters on
complementary feeding and
feeding in special
circumstances (such as
HIV/AIDS).
In
developing the new
materials, cultural and
social aspects of countries
in the Region have been
carefully considered. A
technical committee composed
of experts from five Arab
countries collaborated with
CAH /EMRO in the development
of these materials. Given
the importance of
counselling techniques, a
new training methodology,
based on the IMCI training,
has been used to enable
skill acquisition. In fact,
counselling skills can only
be effectively acquired
through much supervised
clinical practice within the
context of a training
course, while knowledge
alone is inadequate to
master proper counselling
techniques, in order to
promote behavioural change.
The
training materials were
first developed in Arabic as
they deal with counselling,
which is best practised in
the original language and
Arabic is the language of
most countries in the
Region. The regional office
is planning to translate it
into English for further use
by non-Arabic speaking
countries.
The
training materials are
composed of three manuals:
The two
facilitator guides provide
clear guidelines on how to
organize and run the
training course to ensure
the smooth flow of the
different sessions. These
guides include details on
training methodology to
assist the facilitators in
carrying out their role
during the different
sessions of the course. They
also provide the
facilitators with tools to
monitor the progress of the
course and participant
performance. The third
manual - the participant
manual - can be used not
only during the training
course, but also as a
technical reference on
infant and young child
feeding.
The
objective of training is to
strengthen the capacity of
physicians in the area of
infant and young child
feeding counselling, aiming
at changing their knowledge
and improving counselling
practices in this area.
The
course is designed to be
conducted in 7 days with a
total of 56 training hours.
It is a competency-based
course which makes use of
participatory training
methodology, such as reading
and written exercises with
individual or group
feedback, demonstrations,
role plays, video
demonstrations, group
discussions and clinical
practice. The cornerstone of
this training course is
represented by 6 clinical
practices, 2 hours each, to
allow participants to
practise and upgrade their
technical and counselling
skills in the area of infant
and young child feeding in
different situations.
This
final Arabic version is the
result of a series of field
tests conducted in three
regional training courses
with 70 participants
representing 11 Arab
countries in the Region.
Updated as of 13 November
2006
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