Breastmilk Attacks

Last December the Wall Street Journal published an article with the provocative title, As UNICEF Battles Formula Makers, African Infants Sicken*. The article focused on the tricky question of accepting formula donations for African countries hard hit by the HIV epidemic. The authors, Freedman and Stecklow, true to their Wall Street roots, promoted formula makers Wyeth and Nestlé as standing ready to save African babies with donated formulas from the scourge of HIV-infected breastmilk. Standing in the way they say is UNICEF's ideologically driven stance against the industry and insistence on compliance to the International Code. Conveniently forgotten was the continuous injury to millions of babies ravaged by diarrheal and other infectious disease linked to the very practices of free formulas from these very companies.

The inflammatory article can only be seen as another desperate attempt by Nestlé to flog its harmful products and regain entry into the African market under the guise of HIV. Making full use of Nestlé's hired lackey, lobbyist Geraldine Ferraro, the Wall Street journalists portray UNICEF's Carol Bellamy as clinging to breastfeeding and being "suspicious" of the industry, implying that this may now be killing millions of babies.

Carol Bellamy has stood firm. "This is not true." She writes in a letter to the editor. "You fail to acknowledge that UNICEF is leading the way in addressing the mother-to-child transmission, and you fail to explain fully why UNICEF so strongly supports breastfeeding. Exclusive breastfeeding can save lives, as many as 1.5 million a year, according to the World Health Organization. Research showed that formula-fed infants are four to six times more likely to die of disease than breast-fed infant, because formula is often mixed with potentially contaminated water and because it does not build the immune system as well as breastmilk. In the past 10 years alone as many as 15 million young lives have been lost through the lack of breastfeeding."

Further support came from Cornell University's Michael Latham, "Recent visits to four African countries convinced me that for almost all poor mothers, the risks of not breastfeeding are much greater than the risks of HIV infection through breastmilk. As the table in your article shows...out of 90 infected pregnant women in Africa, only 9 to 18 are expected to transmit HIV through breastfeeding. So should governments, or UNICEF, condone a major undermining of breastfeeding when so many women are not expected to infect their infants?"

*The Wall Street Journal Dec. 5, 2000