Nursing moms to get more space

Three hundred lactation rooms will be set up in office buildings, shopping malls and other public places in Shanghai next year, the Oriental Morning Post reported Sunday.

There are currently 189 lactation rooms in Shanghai, though most belong to companies and aren't open to the public, according to the Shanghai General Labor Union.

"We are going to accelerate the creation of public lactation rooms so nursing mothers have a private space to breast-feed their babies," said Shao Xinyu, the head of the union's female worker department.

Shanghai has 3.37 million female workers, according to the Oriental Morning Post. Among them, about 240,000 are nursing mothers.

Since June 1, the union has been pushing for workplaces and public places to designate a private room other than a bathroom as a lactation room to encourage women to breast-feed, which benefits both mothers and their babies, Shao said.

Once these rooms are in place, the union plans to launch a mobile application that can provide nursing mothers with the locations of these rooms and other information about their facilities.

The union has also drafted criteria for setting up lactation rooms according to three standards: basic, standard and extra comfortable, Shao said. The requirements for a basic room are a private room with chairs and a flat table. Facilities required for the higher standards include refrigerators, wash basins and sterilization equipment. "We will also provide other items such as diapers and scientific literature about breast-feeding," Shao said.