March 4, 1999


Increased Breast Feeding Could Save Lives, Study Finds

By PAUL LEWIS

UNITED NATIONS -- Increased breast-feeding could save the lives of up to
1.5 million of the roughly 12 million children under the age of 5 who die
every year around the world, according to initial findings presented here
this week by a group of women's organizations.  The organizations, which
have been trying to measure the economic          benefits of
breast-feeding, told the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on the
Status of Women that they hope to counter what they see as a worldwide
decline in the practice by convincing governments, health authorities and
ordinary families that they should do more to encourage mothers to
breast-feed.  Women are being pressured to give up breast-feeding too soon,
they say, by the need to earn a living, vigorous marketing by manufacturers
of breast-milk substitutes, lack of government incentives and disdain
for the work of breast-feeding.  But children who are not breast-fed tend
to have weaker immune systems and are at greater risk from infectious
diseases, especially          diarrhea and respiratory illnesses, they say.
In Brazil, the death rate for infants who are bottle-fed is 14 times higher
than for infants who are breast-fed. In Indonesia, the annual cost of
treating diarrhea caused by the decline in breast-feeding is estimated at
$40 million, or 20 percent of the country's health budget.
Mothers also benefit from breast-feeding their babies, the study's authors
said, showing less risk of anemia, premenopausal breast cancer and
osteoporosis in old age.
"Our aim is to show what society loses in health and welfare when
breast-feeding is not properly valued and protected," said Selma James of
International Women Count. "Uncovering the economic value of breast-feeding
will raise the social value of the woman who does it."  Her organization,
along with the World Alliance for Breast-Feeding Action and UNICEF, the
U.N. Children's Fund, is among those supporting the study.  Breast-feeding
is also more protective of the environment and encourages population
control, the organizations say. For every 450 tons of infant formula, they
said, 70,000 tons of scrap metal is discarded. And breast-feeding provides
"more months of child spacing than all technological contraceptive methods
combined," the authors say.





----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.                         email:
[log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352
http://www.prairienet.org/laleche/dettwyler.html