Thought that some of you might be interested in the following stats, newly published from Western Australia.
A health survey in WA that looked at a stack of different things incl breastfeeding found that:
20% of aboriginal children in all living environments are breastfeeding and 60% of all aboriginal children in extremely isolated living environments are breastfeeding at age 2 years.
5% of aboriginal children in all living environments are breastfeeding and 16% of all aboriginal children in extremely isolated environments are breastfeeding at age 3 years. As a comparision a study from a few years ago looking at the total population in Aust found that about 1% of children are breastfeeding at 2 years and about 0.4% at 3 years (but the latter figure was based on such small numbers that they were not confident of the statistical validity of this).

I think that it may be helpful for those talking about breastfeeding beyond infancy in Aust to reflect on the precolonial history of breastfeeding that continues to a degree in modern Aboriginal communities.

Karleen Gribble
Australia

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