Heather writes in a comment about carol's original post:
"Countries like Zimbabwe and indeed, in the West, Norway, have never
had a bottle feeding culture."

All African nations are now at risk to become increasingly a bottlefeeding
culture.  The hiv/aids crisis is being used to subvert breastfeeding albeit
in the guise of saving women and children.  The proposal of letting moms with
resources bottlefed if "diagnosed" hiv-positive and those who are in poverty
breastfeed elevates bottlefeeding(whether that is the intent or not).  If a
mother's understanding of the risk of transmission of hiv /aids becomes that
formula is safer than breastfeeding, then even the resource-deprived woman
will find a way to cut down on breastfeeding and provide other milks or
foods.  One cannot have 2 standards of care,  one for the poor and one for
those better-off, without elevating the care of those well-off.

And, of course, this follows for any program that is dealing with
resource-deprived persons such as WIC.  All too often when I told people my
job(when I worked for WIC)the reaction of some middle-class or wealthier
women was interesting.  It was obvious that they felt breastfeeding was a
just punishment for being poor(little did they know, eh?).  Valerie W.
McClain, IBCLC

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