DR. FLORENCE Reyes, head of the Health Services Office-Baguio Health Department (HSO-BHD), is calling on all breastfeeding mothers and their children less than a year old to attend a mass breastfeeding activity at 10 a.m. on May 2 at the BHD grounds.
The activity aims to promote extensively the healthy practice of breastfeeding in the city, for child health and development, she said.
With the theme "Sabay-sabay Sumuso sa Nanay," the event aims to complement as well as break a record earlier established by breastfeeding mothers of Manila at the San Andres Sports Complex in Malate on May 4, 2006, when 3,738 mothers participated.
The HSO is also encouraging breastfeeding mothers to participate as community role models for other mothers.
On August 3, 2002, the City of Berkeley Women Infants Children Program in California, USA had a mass breastfeeding with 1,135 women participating.
Similar activities aimed to inculcate in young mothers the importance of breastfeeding their infants as healthy and positive and for immunization from most illnesses were also done.
As per an earlier measure approved by members of the Baguio City Council, "a fact established by science is that the best first food for babies is breast milk."
As stated in the resolution approved Dec. 4, 2006, "human milk contains living cells, hormones, active enzymes, immunoglobulin and compounds with unique structures that cannot be replicated in infant formula. It contains just the right amount of fatty acids, lactose, water and amino acids for human digestion, brain development and growth. Breast-fed babies suffer fewer illnesses because human milk transfers to the infant the mother's anti-bodies to disease."
More advantages could be considered from breastfeeding, it was emphasized.
The resolution was penned to support the advocacy of the health department for the protection of babies through breastfeeding. It was also done "to hold at bay substitute infant local and foreign milk from promoting "misleading claims and come-ons of milk formula merchants." (JF)
