SUSAN SHEPHERD : New York, June 29, 2011
Forgive my skepticism at Nicholas D. Kristof’s pronouncement that breast-feeding is the cheap miracle cure for malnutrition and child mortality in Niger (“The Breast Milk Cure,” column, June 23).
Exclusive breast-feeding during a child’s first six months of life is not cheap anywhere. Decisions must be made by women about how to allocate time to earn money to feed the family, tend the fields or nurse a new baby.
As a pediatrician with Doctors Without Borders, I have met plenty of mothers in Niger. They walk for miles or work fields under a broiling desert sky carrying their babies on their backs. When a woman is parched, she suspects that her baby is, too — so she gives the baby some water. Breast milk is the best food for babies, but focusing only on exclusive breast-feeding masks the collective failure to provide safe water.
The severe malnutrition Mr. Kristof describes is far more prevalent in 1-year-old Niger infants — an age when breast milk must be complemented with animal-sourced foods to provide infants the nutritional value they need. The meager plant-based foods typical in the Niger diet are as much a contributor to early childhood deaths as poor water and malaria.
I have seen how combinations of better diagnosis and treatment of malaria, immunization and nutrition supplementation with good-quality foods for 6-to-24-month-olds are saving lives. The only reason these programs work is that mothers are willing partners.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/opinion/lweb06kristof.html?_r=1
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