Southern mothers around Wakatipu were bettering national breast-feeding standards, even before the Lakes District Hospital was formally given its national accreditation yesterday.
The hospital has attained a World Health Organisation initiative and become an accredited Baby Friendly Hospital with approval granted by the New Zealand Breast-feeding Authority yesterday.
One of the achievement standards is for 75% of women to be exclusively breast-feeding babies by the time of their discharge date from hospital.
Lakes District Hospital handles, on average, 50 births a year.
Last year it achieved a discharge rate well beyond the benchmark 75% requirement, with 94% breast-feeding at discharge date, according to Southland District Health Board Director of Nursing and Midwifery, women and children, Jenny Humphries.
Lakes District is the latest of more than 80 New Zealand hospitals, to attained accreditation, required by the Ministry of Health and which can take two years.
Mrs Humphries said Lakes District's exceptional 94% discharge rate, attained well before the accreditation and beyond the national average of 82%, was due to the nature and isolation of the close-knit rural community around Wakatipu.
"The high breast-feeding rates in the area are because of strong family support and education shared between mothers in isolated, rural, areas," Mrs Humphries said.
The accreditation had 10 main requirements the two most important being management implementing policy and education and women receiving ante-natal education, and that babies were not fed formula unnecessarily, unless for medical reasons.
She said the accreditation did not open the doors for increased funding or grants.
The emphasis remained on providing care for women and babies and to adopt practices aimed to protect, promote and support exclusive breast-feeding from birth.
She noted women who chose not to breast-feed were also supported in their decision and provided with unbiased information and advice.
The initiative included antenatal interviews of prospective mothers about their knowledge regarding breast-feeding, as provided to them by the staff, and postnatal interviews about mothers' knowledge and the support received from staff to assist them breast-feeding their babies.
•The Baby Friendly Hospital is an initiative of the World Health Organisation and Unicef to strengthen national health systems to support breast-feeding.
