Breast-fed babies healthier, smarter

Health experts on Thursday warned mothers to avoid giving milk formulas to their babies, saying that breast-fed infants are healthier, smarter and less susceptible to serious diseases.

Dr. Howard Sobel, team leader of the Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition Unit of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that babies fed formula milk get sick easily.

Sobel was guest in a media forum titled “Protect breastfeeding: Understanding the past, planning the future,” to mark August as Breastfeeding Month.

“Formula-fed babies are sick much more frequently and longer than breastfed babies,” Sobel said.
He added that breastfeeding within one hour after birth gives a baby a big boost in fighting off diseases in the future.

“[Do] exclusively breastfeed [from] 0 to 6 months . . . do not give water or other foods or formula. This can save one million children under the age of five every year globally,” he said.

Dr. Mariella Castillo, Maternal and Child Health specialist of Unicef-Philippines, said that a study conducted by Infact Canada showed that formula-fed babies were prone to increased risk of asthma, allergy, acute respiratory disease, altered occlusion, infection from contaminated formula, nutrients deficiencies, childhood cancers, chronic diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, gastrointestinal infections, otitis media and ear infections and side effects of environmental contaminants. These babies have reduced cognitive development, the study said.

Castillo said that mothers who do not breastfeed are also at risk of breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer, obesity, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, increased stress and anxiety and maternal diabetes.

On the other hand, Sobel said that breastfeeding reduces the risk of death and illness from sepsis (blood infection in the first month of life), diarrhea, pneumonia, necrotizing entero colitis (a gut problem in preterm babies), ear infections, sudden infant death syndrome, skin allergies, asthma, leukemia, diabetes (type I) and obesity.

“Other benefits of breastfeeding are children are smarter [by 5 IQ points] and the longer the breastfeeding, the bigger the gain in intelligence,” he added.

Low rates
The WHO official said that the Philippines should improve its breastfeeding status.

“Exclusive breastfeeding rates are very low [in the Philippines],” he said.

According to Unicef, only one out of four Filipino mothers breastfeed.

Sobel said that the low breastfeeding rate may be attributed to wrong advertising, marketing and false claims of infant formula companies.

“Advertisements claim that using formula milk can make a child smart and healthy but that’s not true,” he added.

Sobel said that Filipinos spent P12 billion on milk formula in 2003.

“[That’s why] the World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, the introduction of local, nutrient rich complementary foods thereafter with continued breastfeeding to two years of age or beyond,” he said.