Breastfeeding a vital weapon in the fight against HIV-AIDS
[2 April 2007 - 10:00]
Babies who are entirely breastfed, even when their mother is HIV seropositive, run less risk of infection than babies who are brought up on a “mixed” diet of breastmilk and artificial milk.
It appears that babies on a mixed diet lose the intestinal mucous membrane that acts as a natural barrier to the AIDS virus. Professor Hoosen Coovadia and his colleagues at the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies in South Africa monitored 1,372 babies born to seropositive mothers. Nine out of ten were entirely breastfed while all the others received a mixed milk diet.
The level of HIV infection was almost twice as high among the babies on the mixed diet. And in cases where breastmilk was accompanied by solids – baby cereals in particular – the number of infections was 11 times higher.
Another advantage of breastfeeding only is that mothers are better protected from mammary abscesses and other complications that can facilitate transmission of the virus. This is an important discovery as each year over 300,000 children become infected in this way, in Africa in particular. According to Professor Coovadia these results prove that “breastfeeding is the only key solution to combating infant mortality”. A far more outspoken conclusion than WHO recommendations in this respect.
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