There is no good substitute for breast milk

The Lancet Breastfeeding series in 2016 presented overwhelming evidence of the short and long- term benefits of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding saves the lives of mothers and babies and improves health outcomes.

  • It provides optimum nutrition.

  • It is personalised medicine.

  • It could avert almost half of the diarrhoea episodes and a third of respiratory infections in low- and- middle income countries. There is also a reduction in otitis media.

  • It can also reduce the incidence of obesity and diabetes in later life.

  • Breastfeeding also appears to be protective against the development of some allergic and autoimmune diseases, such as asthma, atopic dermatitis among infants of susceptible families (AAP,2012).

  • Breastfeeding improves IQ by 3 points on average, shown to result in improved long- term earnings.

  • Infants who are breastfed have a lower risk of developing leukaemia and dying of sudden infant death syndrome (AAP, 2012)

  • For each year a woman breast feeds her risk of developing breast cancer reduces by 6 %, current this results in saving the results of 20,000 women annually. It also reduces the risk of ovarian cancer.

  • The estimated reduction in health care costs from breastfeeding amount to about $312 million annually.

Low birthweight infants have extra special needs infants

For low- birthweight infants:

  • Breast milk feeding could have even more substantial benefits for preterm infants and is recommended by the AAP for infants born at very low -birthweight in particular (AAP, 2012, 2017).

  • Despite these benefits, mothers of preterm infants often do not have sufficient breast milk to feed their infants, for whom early enteral nutrition has been shown to improve outcomes such as necrotising enterocolitis (NEC), sepsis and meningitis, and early growth compared to parenteral nutrition (Quigley & McGuire, 2014).

  • Reduction of NEC has been shown to be 79% compared to infants fed on formula.

  • Infants fed their own mother’s milk or donor milk are far more likely to tolerate oral feedings earlier, breastmilk promotes the gut closure, improves the motility of the gut, increases absorption of nutrients and the growth of villae in the gut.

In conclusion protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding and increasing the availability, accessibility, and viability of HMBs can be seen as synonymous as advocating for and increasing access to a life-saving medicine. In a recent report (Nurturing the Health and Wealth of Nations: The investment case of breastfeeding), WHO/UNICEF estimated that every $1 invested in enabling a mother to breastfeed generates $35 in economic returns.

References:

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2012). Breastfeeding and the use of human milk. Pediatrics, 129(3), e827-841. doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-3552

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2017). Donor human milk for the high-risk infant: Preparation, safety, and usage options in the United States. Pediatrics, 139(1). doi: 10.1542/peds.2016- 3440

Quigley, M., & McGuire, W. (2014). Formula versus donor breast milk for feeding preterm or low birth weight infants. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews(4). doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD002971.pub3