Our national health minister Aaron Motsoaledi has enraged us here at IOL Lifestyle.
We carried a report from the news agency AFP, quoting him as saying that the country will no longer distribute free infant milk to public hospitals and clinics.
Noting that infant mortality is on the increase in South Africa, he says the government is committed to changing the situation.
He was speaking at a breastfeeding summit where delegates are reported to have recommended that infant formula milk should be distributed only if an authorised health practioner gave permission to mothers who, for medical reasons, could not breastfeed.
“It is undeniable that breastfeeding is the very best way to nourish babies - there is, literally, no substitute for it,” he said.
The minister reckons that the barriers to breastfeeding include aggressive promotion of formula milk by manufacturers, lack of support for working mothers to breastfeed in the workplace and teenage mothers leaving their babies at home with relatives, who rely on formula feeding.
We all know the mantra: breast is best for baby... and it is.
But let’s go back to basics: imagine in front of you a small, squalling baby. Among other survival needs, it requires feeding.
The child’s mother/father/caregiver has, in the main, two choices... let’s break them down:
Formula feeding: You need at least two bottles with decent teats. You need access to clean water that you can boil (to mix with the formula). You need some means of sterilising the bottles, and if you are going to make bottles ahead of time, you need a fridge. It is common sense that in poor households access to many of these things is unlikely, and that formula mixed with contaminated water is Very Bad for a baby.
Breastfeeding: You need the child’s mother, and she needs the space and time to spend several hours a day (and night) pinned to a chair feeding a baby. Or she needs to be able to express her milk and keep it for someone else to give to the baby (and then she needs all the paraphernalia mentioned above). She might also need emotional and practical support when the baby is born to get breastfeeding established. And it helps enormously if she herself has access to good nutrition. It is again common sense that in poor households access to many of these things is unlikely, especially if the mother is employed in a long-hour, poor-pay situation, as so many people are.
So Aaron, perhaps you might be better off trying to expand the options of parents rather than cutting them back?
The problem is not evil machinations by milk manufacturers: the problem is that for very many women ALL of the available options are fraught with difficulty.
Until we up employment and improve our primary healthcare system, perhaps it might be better to guilt the milk manufacturers into providing four decent botttles, a sterilising kit and a BIG bottle of Milton to everyone who leaves a clinic or a public hospital with a baby in their arms? Oh, and don’t forget the free formula, Aaron. - IOL