Truly disgraceful is a term Trump uses whenever the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein or Special Counsel Mueller begins investigating friends and Trump campaign officials of breaking the law. It isn’t. It’s good to see the laws of our country applied equally. The Trump foundation can be investigated just as thoroughly as the Clinton foundation.
What was truly sad, and disgraced our country is the action taken by the US at the World Health Organization. I came close to crying when I read it. Not fake news, Donald Trump. Real shameful action by the US to help US companies producing baby formula to the detriment of their baby’s immune system.
Excellent research, much of it by US scientists in close collaboration with other scientists around the world, has resulted in a much better understanding of the immune system, and how to keep us disease resistant, beginning at age 0 with mother’s milk. I think there isn’t a mother in the world who doesn’t want the best health for her infant. But there is a tremendous amount of advertising which has been going on for decades, telling new moms that formula is better in general.
This is the USA Today’s story:
No country in the world supports breastfeeding moms like they should, according to a new report released Tuesday by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). WHO and UNICEF recommend mothers breastfeed infants within the first hour of birth, exclusively for six months and continue breastfeeding, while adding complementary foods, until the child is at least 2-years-old. Breastfeeding has a host of health benefits, most notably improving a baby’s immunity. “Breastmilk works like a baby’s first vaccine, protecting infants from potentially deadly diseases and giving them all the nourishment they need to survive and thrive,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, said in a release.
According to Dr. Prakash Sunder Shrestha, President of the Nepal Breastfeeding Promotion Forum, “The persistent failure of governments to invest significantly in breastfeeding is hard to
comprehend. Many thousands of babies die each year because they did not enjoy the benefit of breastfeeding and multiple thousands more grow up deprived of the many wonders of this special gift of god of nature and of the mother.
The NYT reports:
,” A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly… the US delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upend the deliberations.”
Ecuador was ready to sponsor the resolution. The US objected to two key passages, calling on countries to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” and another passage to restrict the promotion of food products which many experts say have a deleterious effects on children. Another words, remove any significant recommended actions.
This was crazy and really sad. The US did not negotiate with Ecuador; it threaten them with a cut off of all military and foreign aid if Ecuador did not remove these key statements. Ecuador refused to cave in to US demands, but did not want to introduce the resolution. It got ugly:
The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the US. Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the US.
Finally, Russia came to the rescue, introducing the resolution to the World Health Assembly.
Of course, Donald Trump tweeted that none of this was true.
“The failing NY Times Fake News story today about breast feeding must be called out.” (See PS)
The Trump administration and its support for business profits above everything, including keeping babies healthy, which needs to be called out. Poorer countries have another problem – contaminated water is often mixed with the formula. Mothers sometimes dilute the formula to make it last longer- resulting in malnutrition. Profits from baby’s formula and snacks totaled 71 billion dollars. There’s millions of dollars ready to support the formula makers, and nothing there to help support the mothers, particular from the HHS.
Read the links, then decide who should be “called out.”
Stay tuned,
Dave
PS: (7/12/18): I didn’t include the full Trump tweet, which stated: US “strongly supports breastfeeding but we don’t believe women should be denied access to formula. Many women need this option because of malnutrition and poverty.” Still dishonest, because there was nothing in this resolution denying access to formula.
See Reuter’s article:
https://www.bupaglobal.com/en/your-wellbeing/family-life/breastfeeding-around-the-world
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