BREASTFEEDING – which experts believe to be better for infants than bottle feeding – is even more important in the wake of cyclone Nargis, United Nations experts are saying.

Dr Osamu Kunii, the chief of the health and nutrition section of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said earlier this month that mother’s breast milk is the single most effective way of protecting children from disease.

The World Health Organisation, UNICEF, Save the Children, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, International Committee of the Red Cross, Action Contre la Faim and Merlin have issued a joint statement urging donors and NGOs not to donate infant formula and feeding bottles to breastfeeding mothers without appropriate controls.

Dr Kunii said one of their concerns in the aftermath of Nargis was the donation of breast-milk substitute in the cyclone-affected area. He said many donors wanted to send substitute milk for infants but this could lead to pneumonia and diarrhoea if people use dirty water to prepare it.

“Powdered milk is full of bacteria. Nipples and bottles are difficult to clean. That’s why children are suffering from diarrhoea,” he said.

Dr Kyaw Win Sein, the nutrition officer for UNICEF, said infant formula and other powdered milk products donated during the emergency increased the risk of infectious diseases, malnutrition and death.

He stressed that even women who were physically and emotionally under stress were still able to produce enough milk for their babies.

He said the authorities should arrange wet-nursing for orphaned infants, allowing the use of infant formula only if there was no chance of breastfeeding. Baby bottles should never be used because of the risk of contamination due to the difficulty of effectively cleaning them, he said, suggesting that a cup and spoon be used instead. Dr Kyaw Win Sein urged members of the public who knew that powdered milk was being distributed inappropriately to report this to the authorities.

Many experts assert that mothers’ milk is better than formula for the infant’s health.

“Fifteen percent of mothers in Myanmar exclusively breastfeed during the crucial first six months, while 85pc do not exclusively breastfeed,” Dr Kunii said.

Dr Kyaw Win Sein added that many Myanmar mothers gave their infants water.
“Do not give an infant being breastfed a single drop of water. Water is already contained in the milk, and children will suffer from diarrhoea if they are given water,” he said.

Dr Kyaw Win Sein said mothers should be encouraged to start breastfeeding within one hour after birth, to breastfeed exclusively for six months, to continue breastfeeding with complementary foods until and beyond two years, to breastfeed during child illness and diarrhoea, to re-lactate for mothers who stopped breast feeding and to keep wet-nursing for children who have lost their mothers.

He said the benefits of breastfeeding for babies included access to critical nutrients, immunological factors of many types, anti-infective factors, growth factors, hormones, digestive enzymes, and other bioactive factors.
Breastfed children also tend to have high IQ scores and improved visual development.

Benefits to the mothers include reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer, iron loss, bone loss with aging and type II diabetes, and improved post-partum recovery.

He said infants who are not breastfed are five times more likely to die from pneumonia and 14 times more likely to die from diarrhoea than those who are exclusively breastfed for the first six months.