Superfood for Babies: How overcoming barriers to breastfeeding will save children’s lives.

Today, Monday 18 February 2013, Save the Children has launched a report about 4 major barriers to breastfeeding and how they affect the world's children.

The barriers identified are community and cultural pressures; shortage of health workers; lack of maternity protection; and the ‘Big Business Barrier’, the impact the actions of the breastmilk substitutes (BMS) manufacturers have on breastfeeding rates.

The first hour after birth is very important for babies.  If exclusive breastfeeding were initiated in the first hour after birth, Save the Children tells us that ‘we could save 95 tiny lives every hour.’

The launch of this report is combined with a campaign to call the manufacturers of BMS to account.

Save the Children was one of the supporters the World Breastfeeding Conference 2012 which I wrote about in a previous blog. One of the statements to come out of the Conference is ‘Breastfeeding is a public health imperative’. We welcome the Save the Children report and the campaign to call 'Big Business' to account and protect the health and well-being of their customers. Babies who are not breastfed are at risk of infection, malnutrition and  even death. The Save the Children report and campaign focuses on the effects in poorer countries where the risk of death is high.

The anti-breastfeeding lobby is working hard.  There is already an article in the Daily Mail saying that the report is ‘guilt tripping’ mothers in the UK who use formula. No report can make a mother feel guilty. She may already be having a hard time because her baby is more likely to be ill and hospitalised with all the unhappiness that brings because she is giving formula. This may be an attempt by the companies to distract us from the campaign to call them to account. Don’t let them do it.  Breastfeeding must be protected and defended whenever the suggestion that it is not important appears in public.

To access the petition: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/danone-nestle-petition   

For more information about the campaign and the report: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/95-babies

Jill

P.S. There is an argument against calling breastmilk a ‘superfood’, with all the suggestion that it is an ‘added extra’ rather than the normal food for babies (but, that's another blog).