Experiences of a midwife in some of the most war-torn places in the world.
Here is her experience with Nestle in developing countries!

http://loadedbow.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/amy-osborne-overseas-midwife/#more
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Amy in Darfur

LB: I understand you are an advocate of boycotting Nestle and educating
people about the damage they have done and are doing in the third world. Can
you tell us a bit about this topic and why it matters?

 A: You might not want to get me started on Nestle.I'm a bit of a zealot
.According to UNICEF: "Marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding are
potentially hazardous wherever they are pursued: in the developing world,
WHO estimates that some 1.5 million children die each year because they are
not adequately breastfed." Babies who are bottle-fed are more prone to
illness, no matter what country they are in. This is simply because they are
missing out on the antibodies that are present in their mother's
breast-milk. Babies who are bottle-fed in certain countries are at an
astronomically higher risk of illness and death. This is because of the lack
of clean water, the inability to sterilize the bottles and/or the family's
poverty leads them to over-dilute the formula. These three factors can lead
to fatal cases of diarrhea, dehydration or starvation.

Nestle is one of the most aggressive marketers of baby formula and
consistently finds ways to undermine breastfeeding in favour of infant
formula. Their employees stand in the aisles of supermarkets in the
Philippines, dressed professionally, convincing people that it is better for
their baby to be bottle-fed. Their employees "befriend" hospitals, doctors
clinics and maternity centers and their staff (take them out bowling, for
dinner, bring gifts, etc) in order to have the staff wear Nestle labels on
their scrubs and/or put up posters. In Afghanistan they were the only
company to sell infant formula and they had managed to brainwash the women
so well that I had to fight them tooth and nail to breastfeed. Often they
would use most of the family income to buy the formula and their other
children would go hungry as a result. The ones who couldn't afford the
Nestle formula were so convinced that their breast-milk was bad for their
babies that they would give them chewed up cookies and sugar-water instead.
Want to guess how long those babies lived? I can't even count how many
babies I've seen being buried because they were given Nestle formula instead
of their mother's breast-milk. Nestle is evil. They know that their efforts
to improve their profits cost babies their lives. And they do it anyways. My
sister says, "At the end of the day you only have yourself to face. At the
end of your life, that is another matter altogether". I agree.

www.babymilkaction.org <http://www.babymilkaction.org/>  (a great
anti-Nestle website. All of the facts)




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