A statement
for CSW, March, 2000, from
Eradicating
Poverty: where does breastfeeding fit in?
Commission on the Status of Women 2002
Theme: eradicating poverty, including through the empowerment
of women throughout the life cycle in a globalizing world
Breastfeeding
is a highly efficient way to give the best food, care and basic
health protection to infants and young children, half of whom
are girls. A breastfeeding mother puts her own time and energy
into nurturing her child. In return for this investment, she saves
the cost of buying specialized infant foods and providing the
extra care that is needed when a child sickens without the shield
of mother's milk. By breastfeeding, a woman also enhances her
own well-being, attains better nutritional status, benefits from
a longer interval between pregnancies, and improves her long-term
health.
A lactating
woman is a food producer. She can contribute 400 liters of milk
per child-or more-to her family's economy. This is empowerment
at the most basic level.
Poverty
and the overwork that comes with poverty increase demands on women.
Lack of time and energy may limit a mother's ability to feed and
care for her children. A woman in poverty not only lacks resources,
she also lacks power to make choices. She is at risk of losing
a basic capability: to function as a lactating woman and breastfeeding
mother. Reducing poverty can give women more options, including
the option to breastfeed their children.
Support
which enables a woman to breastfeed keeps the mother and child
in charge of infant feeding; it frees them from control by the
health care system, the marketplace, or the mother's employer.
One measure
of women's empowerment is to track globally the proportion of
mothers who breastfeed their infants exclusively until six months
of age. Another is to count breastmilk production in national
food statistics. At present, only Norway does so.
The conditions
that enable a woman to breastfeed optimally are conditions that
are good for all women. These include physical safety, adequate
food and clean water, gender equality, pay equity and the sharing
of family responsibilities.
Globalization
reduces trade barriers and brings a freer flow of products to
new markets. We call on governments to implement the International
Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and all relevant
World Health Assembly resolutions, which provide protection to
breastfeeding women and their infants at a vulnerable stage in
the life-cycle.
Disasters:
where does breastfeeding fit in?
Commission on the Status of Women 2002 Theme: environmental management
and mitigation of environmental disasters: a gender perspective
Disasters
impact disproportionately on pregnant and nursing women and on
young children. A family disrupted by an emergency is twice-victimized
if breastfeeding is abandoned. Women play a critical environmental
role by their ability to provide a safe and secure food supply
for their young children. Promoting breastfeeding prior to environmental
disasters, and protecting breastfeeding during and after disasters,
especially floods and earthquakes, is a fundamental part of disaster
mitigation and management.
Humanitarian
relief that offers infant formula in an emergency may spring from
good intentions, but these efforts undermine a woman's confidence
in her power to provide food and protection for her child. It
is especially difficult to use formula safely in disaster conditions,
and formula feeding also risks the considerable increase in child
morbidity and mortality that comes when children lose the unique
anti-infective properties of breastmilk. It is the infants in
communities where no one remembers how to breastfeed who are most
at risk during disasters.
Breastfeeding
remains the most environmentally sound infant feeding strategy.
To breastfeed a woman needs only food and drinking water, plus
knowledge. Bottle-feeding requires fuel to boil water, specially
modified milk mixtures, and the paraphernalia of cans, pans, labels,
bottles and rubber nipples that will go on to become rubbish once
the baby is fed. Breastfeeding is environmentally low-impact;
thus, it plays a key role in the environmental management strategies
which seek to prevent disasters. Because lactation is a very efficient
way to produce food, breastfeeding provides a sustainable food
resource in all circumstances.
Recommendations:
-
Train
humanitarian aid workers on the importance of identifying the breastfeeding
mothers, whose ability to sustain life is doubly precious during
a disaster.
-
Train
aid workers in basic skills to assist mothers to breastfeed.
-
Provide
the services of a breastfeeding counselor or lactation consultant
in disaster relief efforts, to upgrade staff skills and advise on
re-lactation and non-routine situations.
-
Create
a special place where refugee mothers can find help with breastfeeding,
feed and care for their babies, and give support to each other.
-
Provide
information to all mothers on how to breastfeed exclusively for
about 6 months, and support them in doing so.
-
Include
breastfeeding protection, promotion, and support in the text of
environmental policy documents, recommendations and conventions.
Last updated February 3, 2007 by sjs.
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:34:22 UTC 2007.
