Mother’s milk/formula milk

Nutritional safety for bottle-fed infants requires money enough to maintain the appropriate concentration of nutrients and a minimum of environmental conditions in the home, including drinking or boiled water.

It soon became clear in poorer settlements that a bottle-fed infant was three times more likely to die than one breast-fed by its mother. In addition, in all population centres, even the most privileged, bottle-fed infants were more prone to morbidity and mortality from otitis and other respiratory problems, as well as from allergies.

The spread of the feeding bottle also partly coincided with the rise of women with paid work, although it was mainly due to the advertising methods of the baby-food manufactures, who, among other gimmicks, gave women a packet of formula milk for use at home which they received from staff on the maternity ward. When the packet ran out and they discovered the cost of artificial breastfeeding, women had stopped producing milk as this requires the continued sucking of the infant on the nipple.

HIV is transmitted through breast milk, so in such cases the use of formula milk is important.

Photo, Clara Sánchez