Bottle feeding — a weapon of mass destruction

Bottle feeding is a weapon of mass destruction because it is a baby killer, said Professor Muhamed Omer, of the University of the West Indies Child Health Unit on Wednesday at the North West Regional Health Authority’s corporate breast-feeding breakfast meeting at Cascadia Hotel.

“This is not an option,” he said. Professor Omer said many substitutes for breast milk have been made from cows and are suitable for calves not humans. He said calves needed very different nutritional requirements to grow. Speaking to Newsday he said many studies have shown that bottle feeding can cause infection, babies don’t get enough of the right nutrients and this feeding habit causes health complications later on including diabetes, obesity and hypertension. Professor Omer will be in charge of an intensive education programme for health personnel which is expected to start soon. It will first target hospitals, health centres and then private facilities and general practitioners. The programme will last for about a year.

Dr Rai Ragbir, Primary Care Physician II admitted that there is misinformation about breast-feeding even from health care professionals. He said they were not perfect but the education programme will change this. Omer said many health staff were not taught the details of breast-feeding in schools. He said much of the information doctors received came from pharmaceutical representatives who represent companies selling milk products to substitute for breast milk. He said they often highlighted the problems with breast-feeding but this was “absolute rubbish and not the answer”. In his presentation Omer told business officials in attendance that breast feeding is an ancient process which established the woman’s body as the first productive machine (of children) and first to produce food (breast milk). He said if this principle is accepted breast-feeding would be seen as not a purely physiological process but a “fact of life.” As women form a sizeable proportion of the work force it is the duty of employers to ensure the work environment allows them to breast feed.

Omer said employers benefited from allowing mothers to have longer maternity leave and time and place to extract their milk to take home, or time to feed their baby. “These are advantages to the employer not privileges to the employee.” Outlining initiatives in countries around the world, he said in Scandinavian countries mothers get up to 18 months leave. “This can be shared by either the father or mother.” They also received “sizeable remuneration” during this period. Omer said Uruguay offered women who just delivered half working time with pay while Guatemala encourages women to have a crib beside her desk. He refuted the notion that the baby would cry and disrupt the work environment. “The baby is much more satisfied, the mother is less preoccupied than if the baby is at home so she is more productive.” In the Phillippines they experimented with child care centres managed by breast-feeding mothers who not only breast fed their own babies but others in their care. Omer said Bangkok has creches in hospital, and as there was a large female staff in TT’s hospitals this was an initiative which the health authorities could adopt locally. He said this was shown to be feasible and effective.