Save world one feed at a time

Reasons to boost breastfeeding worldwide have become more urgent, says Sue Cox

IT was estimated that more than 130 million babies were born in 2017. The Global Breastfeeding Scorecard, evaluating breastfeeding rates in 194 nations, found fewer than 40 per cent of babies were breastfed exclusively in the first six months of life. In China, fewer than 30 per cent of the 15 million babies born that year breastfed at all.

The unsustainable increase in world population began with the industrial revolution in the 18th century. Due to social and economic pressures, many mothers were forced to shorten the period of, or abandon, breastfeeding and leave the babies to be fed laudanum-laced pap. Because the mothers were not using the age-old contraception that breastfeeding provides, they were soon pregnant again.

Now, in all countries where babies are bottle fed and contraception is difficult to access or culturally unacceptable, women return to fertility, sometimes within six weeks after the birth.

Although commercial artificial baby milk, now called formula, was first available in the late 1850s it was not until the 1950s that powdered cow’s milk for babies became readily available. Formula companies have proliferated leading to dire consequences for the natural environment.

These companies have sold their cans of dried cow’s milk in every country on our planet without consideration of the financial hardships of families or the difficulties and problems of reconstitution of the milk powder.

Reconstitution information is written on each can with the necessity to boil water and sterilise equipment. However this information is difficult to follow for mothers in countries where safe, clean, running water is not available and where wood is the main fuel source. Gathering firewood is part of the deforestation which has led to an increase in desert lands in many countries.

The major cause of deforestation is the clearing of forests for pastures. As land is cleared for farming and grasses are grown instead of trees, there has been an increase in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as grasses absorb only small amounts of carbon dioxide in comparison to trees. Herds of milking cows have multiplied on these grasslands. The amount of energy used in producing formula has increased, in electricity production, transport and recycling.

It is becoming apparent that in this time of climate change that there is an added imperative for all babies to receive breast milk, whether from their mother or a milk bank. These reasons are being brought to us on our television, internet or newspaper headlines much more frequently. It is the horror of floods, earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis and other natural disasters.

In the aftermath of these disasters, how is a mother going to reconstitute the powdered milk if in fact the can has survived. There is usually no safe water source and no fuel, eg electricity or wood, to boil water to sterilise the bottle and teat or mix the powder. Usually aid agencies cannot deliver these requirements for a few days.

It is time for governments to prioritise the health of their citizens in a way that will lessen the likelihood of babies dying during natural disasters due to global warming. Finances need to be allocated for preventive health care information and support, in this case human milk feeding, with the added bonus of decreasing global warming.

Too much of government health budgets is for curative support for chronic diseases when demographic research shows that many of these diseases could have been prevented by receiving human milk from birth.

Each mother simply uses her normal diet for the energy to produce unique human milk for her baby. It is the complete first food and the birthright for all humans.

A baby breastfeeding is saving the world one feed at a time.