MANILA: So what's better for a baby, mother's milk or artificial food sold in the market? Ask the thousands of Philippine mothers who breast-fed simultaneously in day-care centers and hospitals yesterday, and you'll be left in no doubt.
Breast-feeding advocates, social welfare officials and UNICEF spearheaded a campaign to counter advertising claims that artificial baby foods are better than mother's milk, and hope to set the first Guinness record for most women breast-feeding simultaneously at multiple sites.
Babies not being breast-fed is a problem not only in the Philippines but across the world. Women everywhere are misled by advertisements and tend not to breast-feed their babies. The advantages of mother's milk are too wide with no drawbacks at all, but ignorance and modern lifestyle stop women from breast-feeding.
A count in the Philippines yesterday showed at least 3,608 mothers across the country took part in the campaign, said an official of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
This is not the first time that Filipina mothers have campaigned against "bogus" baby food advertising.
Last year, Manila broke the Guinness record on simultaneous breast-feeding at a single site when 3,541 mothers gathered at a sport complex. They broke the previous record of 1,130 mothers breast-feeding in Berkeley, California, in 2002.
In 2003, the World Health Organization estimated that 16,000 Filipino children below the age of five died because of improper feeding practices, which included the use of infant formula.
Today, only 16 percent of Filipino children between four and five months old are exclusively breast-fed, while 13 percent of mothers do not breast-feed at all because they think they don't have enough milk, according to UNICEF.
"We need every possible way to get the message across that Philippine mothers should breast-feed exclusively for six months" and then supplement it with other food products for two years and beyond, UNICEF spokesman Dale Rutstein said.
Agencies
(China Daily 05/03/2007 page1)
