In the developing world, children are dying every minute of the day due to lack of breastfeeding. A recent report from the government of Uganda suggests that at 'least 4000 infants and young children die everyday in Uganda due to lack of breastfeeding'. Can this be true, and if so, why?
The figure above can be disputed. The Ugandan government lacks the sophisticated data analysis of Western government, but it cannot be denied that each year thousands of babies and infants die each year in this country due to lack of breastfeeding. The World Health Organization - an organization with the best data gathering expertise the Western world can offer - estimates that 1.5 million children die each year because they are not breastfed. The WHO states: "It has been estimated that improved breastfeeding practices could save some 1.5 million children a year. Yet few of the 129 million babies born each year receive optimal breastfeeding and some are not breastfed at all. Early cessation of breastfeeding in favour of commercial breastmilk substitutes, needless supplementation, and poorly timed complementary practices are still too common."
But why does the use of formula milk lead to so many infant deaths? There are two main reasons. The first being that only breast milk can provide the nutrients and antibodies that a baby requires to grow and fight off infection. For babies born into poorer and less sanitized conditions than we have in the West, this is vital. Formula milk is non-biological: it contains none of the benefits that mother's breast milk can provide. Formula milk is stagnant. What is meant by this is that mother's breast milk changes constituency throughout the early months - and years - of a growing child; not just day to day, month to month, but during the actual feed itself. The second, and by far the greatest reason why babies die from baby formula in poorer countries, is due to the lack of clean water. Mothers in many developing countries don't have access to clean drinking water and so are forced to feed formula milk to their children that is made with contaminated water. Over a million children die each year because of diarrhea that is directly attributable to being feed formula milk.
If mothers in developing countries know the risk they run when feeding their children formula milk, why do they continue to do so? The answer is that they don't know the health risks. The health minister of Uganda, Dr Richard Nduhura, blamed the increasingly poor breastfeeding culture in the country on aggressive advertising for bottle feeding, where marketing gimmicks and slogans are used to discredit breastfeeding. "Those advertisers claim breastfeeding is best but bottle feeding is almost as good as breastfeeding," Nduhura said. In developing countries, this is simply not true.
Aggressive marketing is clearly to blame for the widespread desertion of breastfeeding. Manufacturers of formula milk - like cigarette manufacturers - have seen sales of their product decline in Western society, but they still continue to increase profits. This increase in profits is due to dumping their product on the developing world.
African countries - and others - have further complications due to widespread HIV infectivity. Many mothers have to make the hard decision to either breastfeed their baby if they know themselves to be infected with HIV, or to use formula milk. Mothers with HIV who breastfeed, have a 5 to 20 per cent chance of passing on the infection to the child. However, bottle feeding is actually more likely to harm their child in countries that contain large numbers of HIV infected mothers.
What can be done? Many developing countries are finally waking up to the problem of mothers not breastfeeding and are now trying to reverse the trend. We, in the West, can also make a difference. We can begin by breastfeeding and by not purchasing formula milk. We can also stop buying other products made by formula milk manufacturers. We can also write or email the manufacturers directly. We can also join breastfeeding circles and organizations and voice our concerns through these bodies. Public pressure can make a difference.
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