A highly respected Toronto clinic that thousands of women and their children have turned to for breastfeeding help is at risk of closing due to a lack of funding.

Dr. Jack Newman, considered a world leader in breastfeeding education and support, started up a clinic in 1984 and received public funding while he operated out of various local hospitals. In 2005 he was forced to move out of the hospital setting due to budget cuts and in 2006 he co-founded the Newman Breastfeeding Clinic and Institute with lactation consultant and educator Edith Kernerman, a service that relies solely on private funding.

But the cash flow will cease as of September 30th, meaning the clinic may have to close in the coming months if another donor doesn't come forward.

"We're only here because we had some private family foundations be very generous and who've been able to help us up until now," Kernerman told CityNews.ca. "Unfortunately that funding, we've been told, has to stop."

The Newman Clinic, which operates out of the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in North York, offers support to about 2,500 mothers every year, including third-time mom Ashley Pickett, who described her experiences as she nursed her five-week-old daughter under the guidance of a lactation consultant at Dr. Newman's offices Wednesday.

"We've been here with each baby, we had different problems with all of them and Dr. Newman's clinic, after seeing many other clinics and lactation consultants, was able to help us get our babies breastfeeding," she explained. "So it's very important to me. Breastfeeding, in general, is very important to me."

The Ontario Health Insurance Program (OHIP) covers Newman's services, but last year the clinic had to start charging a nominal administration fee on a woman's first three visits if she could afford to pay.

The clinic's website, which offers free tip sheets and video instruction, has also served as an invaluable resource to women and educators around the globe. It, too, will cease to exist if funding isn't found.

"We've been really lucky to have access to [Dr. Newman's] clinic and expertise here in Toronto and it certainly would be a great loss for the clinic to close," Katrina Kilroy, president of the Association of Ontario Midwives, said.

Dr. Newman and Kernerman outside their offices.

Newman, who was a staff pediatrician in the emergency department at the Hospital for Sick Children for nearly a decade and who has authored popular books on breastfeeding, believes the province needs to do a better job of providing families with greater consistency of care when it comes to breastfeeding, which he says is a money-saving form of preventative health care.

"Every day there are babies being readmitted to the hospital with dehydration because the mothers didn't get the help and information they needed to understand how breastfeeding works," he explained. "And every time we admit a baby to a special care unit or the neo natal intensive care unit, that costs thousands of dollars and that's happening on a daily basis in Ontario."

Newman said he's contacted the provincial government several times to address the issue of promoting breastfeeding and beefing up education, but to no avail.

"Specific programs, such as breastfeeding clinics, are funded at the discretion of hospitals. We work through our [36] public health units on a number of different initiatives," provincial ministry of health representative Alan Findlay told CityNews.ca Thursday .

Those include the Child Health and Healthy Babies, Healthy Children programs, which offer telephone consultations for breastfeeding mothers, home visits and group parenting sessions, he said.

When asked if Dr. Newman's clinic would get provincial funds, Findlay said money would have to come through a public health unit.

Studies have shown breastfeeding lowers a woman's risk of ovarian and breast cancers and possibly, osteoporosis. Kids see benefits in the form of lower risks of childhood cancers, obesity and allergies.

"In Toronto we have over 90 per cent of women giving birth who are choosing to breastfeed, so why are we ignoring such a massively huge part of the population?" Kernerman noted.

Newman said mothers who want to nurse become frustrated when they're given conflicting information or pressured into supplementing with formula in hospital.

"Every day I get several emails from mothers who are essentially crying in the email saying that my pediatrician told me that I have to stop breastfeeding ... I really want to breastfeed and I just don't know what to do now," he said.

He also noted that, in general, breastfeeding education and support hasn't changed that much since he attended medical school.

"When I was a medical student all I learned about breastfeeding ... was that breast milk always comes at the right temperature and comes in such cute containers. That was said by the pediatrician who gave us the lecture," he explained.

"It hasn't gotten much better. There's more theoretical stuff but there's very little that pediatricians learn about the practical aspects of breastfeeding."

Newman and Kernerman's centre offers the clinic and an institute, which trains lactation consultants, midwifery students, doulas, nurses and others in their breastfeeding techniques. It, too, could close.

Kernerman said along with a lack of consistent breastfeeding education across the province, many women still feel uneasy nursing in public, and that needs to change in order to improve breastfeeding success rates.

"Breastfeeding, like walking, is natural, but it's a learned behaviour. And so when your child goes and falls the first few times you're not going to say, okay, that's it, it's off to crutches for the rest of your life. No, you're going to pick that child up and you're going to learn how to walk with that child and that child will learn to walk with you," she said.

"And it's the same with breastfeeding. We need to learn, we need to learn by watching women around us breastfeed and we don't see women breastfeed because women are afraid to do it out in public."

The Canadian Breastfeeding Foundation is accepting donations on behalf of the Newman clinic. For more information, click here.

Stock image top left

To read Tracy Moore's blog on her breastfeeding experiences, click here.

shawne.mckeown@citytv.com