Dear colleagues: Tragedies, like the winter tsunami and Katrina, Hugo etc., bring our passion about BF to the surface. It also shows how in reality the efforts to relactate or induce lactation are not in the management plans, or in the minds of the victims. There have been a couple of very good posts about the emotional and mental states of victims, which think were instructive. Thanks. It seems to me that this is the time to identify ourselves and our profession as being experts and contribute to future emergency planning. Interestingly, there seems to be a great lack of accurate information on the topic. And as a profession, we need to address this. I suspect there are conditions and situations that make relactation the smartest thing to do, and times when it is most difficult without good planning and support, and most of all, knowledge of how to do it. We need more information and experience. I have volunteered to go to the hurricane region, but have not been called up. I ask myself why? Planners don't understand the need for lactation services? Maybe because I do not have "emergency training". Untrained people cannot be much help. Relactation support in a fully functioning hospital must be quite different from working in a shelter where everything is filthy, including the breasts of the woman who just waded miles through contaminated water. And how do you rinse the breasts off when there is no clean water? I hope you are not all wailing for that remark, but I am sure we would need to be able to reassure the mothers and the medical administrators that breastfeeding in that situation is not doing harm...introducing horrible bacteria into the mouth of the baby. So we need evidence. We need to be well prepared. I am going to disaster training next week and try again. But my point is, now, while we are full of fire, will ILCA, LLLI, NABA, and other US Breastfeeding organizations, IBLCE put emergency breastfeeding service and delivery of lactation services high on the "to do" list and begin lobbying for our involvement in planning committees. This would mean developing a new sub-organization, but it may be necessary. This is an opportunity to sat to the world "breastfeeding is a life saving, not a life style issue". And while there is plenty of room for discussion about the role of government breastfeeding policy, the US agencies, seems to me, to more receptive that ever to BF issues. I might be wrong...but I think that now and in the near future, it would be wise for us to contact our local, state, national governments to demand inclusion in the emergency planning process. We might need to get ourselves trained in emergency policies as well. This group of breastfeeding advocates knows full well we can make ourselves heard...and we should. I would re-iterate, however, that it would be good to really know what we are talking about, before we start. As a US citizen, I make my comments about the US governmental agencies. I realize that Lactnet is a very international group and i mean no disrespect to others from other nations, who may have emergency lactation programs and may be able to offer insights based on experience. Anne Andrianos __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html