Consumer Voice :: BreastFeeding

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Breast Milk an elixir of life and a treasure of nutrients

Dr. Madhu Saxena

Breast milk is an essential lifeline for infants, which provides ideal nutrition to the babies, protects them against infections, allergies and asthma. Breastfeeding particularly exclusive during first six months promotes physical, physiological, motor, mental and psychosocial growth and development. It is recommended that exclusive breastfeeding should continue for first six months and thereafter-complementary food along with continued frequent breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is well recognized and is a means to protect, promote and support the health and development of infants and young mothers. The false opinion and a trend of thought that a modern woman has lost the ability to suckle her young a has to be changed as regards the women of the future.

Benefits of Breastfeeding

Besides the overall benefits of breast milk, including immunological factors protecting the child from various illnesses, it has been found that through a Danish study that Breast fed babies have higher adult IQs and cuts way down on lung and ear infection (reported in May, 8 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association). Children nursed for less than a month had a lower average IQ (99.4) than children nursed for at least two months (101.7). Children nursed for four to six months and seven to nine months had average IQs for 102.3 and 106 and 104 respectively.

WHA Resolution 55.25 Infant and Young child Nutrition

Every year as much as 55% of infant deaths from diarrhroeal disease and acute respiratory infections may be the result of inappropriate feeding practices. Still less than 35% of infants worldwide are exclusively breastfed for even the first four months of life, and that complementary feeding practices are frequently ill-timed, inappropriate and unsafe. Malnutrition has been responsible, directly or indirectly, for 60 % of the 10.9 million deaths annually among children under five.

The global burden of diseases on account of malnutrition and its consequences

blindness and mortality due to vitamin A deficiency,

impaired psychomotor development due to iron deficiency and anaemia,

irreversible brain damage as a consequence of iodine deficiency,

the massive impact on morbidity and mortality of protein-energy malnutrition, and obesity.

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