|
ROXAS City: The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef)
has a country program that seeks to muster community-based
initiatives toward the promotion of children’s rights for
survival, development, protection and participation.
Capiz is one of the pilot areas
of this program that is now on its sixth phase.
One part of the program is on
breastfeeding. Mother’s breast milk costs nothing. And nothing
compares with mother’s milk when it comes to nutritional contents.
The breastfeeding campaign also
jibes with the government’s P1-billion program to fight off hunger
to make sure that children are up on their feet and fit for school
every morning and nurtured by families who will also be served a
menu of interventions to lift them up through jobs and skills-based
enterprise.
Unicef put out the facts again
based on Philippine conditions as it pressed its campaign in favor
of breastfeeding. For Unicef, there’s no let-up in the campaign,
which is part of its global program to promote the rights of
children.
It has tapped the help of
government institutions, local governments and other organizations
in its effort to push breastfeeding as a healthier and better source
of child nutrition.
Unicef-Manila Senior Program
Monitoring Assistant distributed fact sheets on the benefits of
breastfeeding to PIA Information Officers during the
seminar-workshop on “Stay bird flu free Philippines” held on
March 19 to 21, 2007, in Metro Manila under Unicef’s auspices.
The other figures provided by
Unicef reveal that a breastfeeding mother gets 98 percent amount of
protection from pregnancy if she does not give the baby any other
food or drinks or a pacifier, she breastfeeds on demand day and
night, her menstrual periods have not resumed, and the baby is less
than six months old.
While breastfeeding practically
costs not even a single centavo, the minimum monthly cost of
formula-feeding an infant can reach up to P2,000.
Based on World Health
Organization figures, the amount spent yearly for hospitalization,
health consultations and medicines for illnesses due to
formula-feeding is P430 million.
 --Panay
News
|
