DUE PERHAPS to the coronavirus pandemic, the government and the public overlooked the previous month of August as Breastfeeding Awareness Month pursuant to Republic Act 10028, otherwise known as the Expanded Breastfeeding Promotion Act of 2009. This observance aims to raise public awareness on the importance of and to further promote breastfeeding in the country.
So yes, it is never too late to emphasize that the promotion of breast milk as the most healthy and ecologically sound food for babies is a shared effort of the government and civil society. In fact, public health experts have long been concerned over the disturbing decline in breastfeeding in the Philippines, and the waning rate in breast-feeding has been linked to the death of thousands of children under five due to improper feeding practices. Way, way back this was – and is still – a problem. Data from some 17 years ago (2003 National Demographic and Health Survey) showed that only 16.1 percent of Philippine infants were solely breast-fed up to four to five months of age, down from 20 percent in 1998.
Breast milk offers the best nutritional start in life for children, providing babies with vital nutrients, sufficient water for hydration, and health-enhancing antibodies and enzymes to protect them against infection and allergy. Breast-feeding allows a healthy bonding between the baby and the mother and further helps in birth spacing.
Breast milk is naturally produced and readily available to the infant consumer at the right temperature without creating waste and pollution that lead to climate change and a host of community health and environmental problems. Thus as advocates for waste prevention and reduction, we cannot help but be incensed by the attack against breastfeeding by multinational companies promoting breast milk substitutes (infant formulas). We assert that breastfeeding is not only best for babies and their mothers, but also best in protecting the environment. Any attempt to undermine breast-feeding is a gross disservice to Mother Earth and humanity.
Yes, there are ecological benefits to breast-feeding. Unlike infant formula, breast milk is waste-free and requires neither paper, plastic and tin packaging or feeding gear like plastic bottles and teats, the production of which consumes lots of raw materials and generates tons of wastes and toxics.
By breast-feeding, women forestall the further destruction of our ravaged environment, given that breast-feeding requires no forest to be cleared for pasture or to grow cattle feed, no trees to be felled for the labels and promotional gimmicks, no mountain to be mined to produce tin cans, and no fossil fuels to be burned to support the complex cycle of producing and transporting milk substitutes.
So let us continue to appeal to the government and the civil society to defend the right of each and every baby to full access to breast milk for the sake of child, maternal and environmental health.
