Breastfeeding - Practices, problems and prospects

Abstract

Medical and public health experts advocate breastfeeding as the best method of feeding young infants for a wide variety of reasons. It is evident that even the most sophisticated and carefully adapted formulae can never replicate human milk, as human milk has anti-infective properties, and is a 'live' fluid which cannot be mimicked in an artificial formula.

An adequate supply of human breast milk is known to satisfy virtually all the nutritional needs of an infant at least for the first six months of life. It is easily digestible and facilitates skin to skin contact and physical warmth between mother and child, which further strengthens the emotional bond between them. Breast milk, and especially colostrum, in the long term, prevents atherosclerosis, hypertension, and obesity; it also prevents allergy to non-specific proteins and develops immunity.