{"id":81684,"date":"2017-08-05T21:09:26","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T21:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/2000-philippine-mums-show-breast-is-best-for-babies\/"},"modified":"2017-08-05T21:09:26","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T21:09:26","slug":"2000-philippine-mums-show-breast-is-best-for-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/2000-philippine-mums-show-breast-is-best-for-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"2,000 Philippine mums show breast is best for babies"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<p>Some 2,000 mothers in the Philippines breastfed their babies in public on Saturday in a gathering aimed at cutting infant deaths and dispelling taboos over the practice.\n                                <\/p>\n<p>To the upbeat sounds of local pop songs, hundreds of mothers<\/a> suckled their babies inside a cavernous Manila stadium, some of them multitasking by feeding two children at the same time. <\/p>\n<p>Organisers of the annual event said they aimed to encourage Filipina mothers to exclusively breastfeed their babies for the first six months to lower the country&#8217;s high infant mortality rate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the Philippines we still have a very low infant breastfeeding rate,&#8221; Ros Macachor, an organiser for the non-government advocacy group Breastfeeding Pinays told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>Macachor said Filipina mothers typically breastfeed their newborns only for the first 24 days, then switch to commercial infant formula<\/a> which is ubiquitous and heavily marketed by powerful conglomerates.<\/p>\n<p>A WHO study published in 2013 found only 34 percent of Filipino infants<\/a> younger than six months were exclusively breastfed, and an &#8220;alarming&#8221; 36 percent were fed infant formula.<\/p>\n<p>This was due to &#8220;aggressive marketing by milk companies&#8221; to counter laws designed to encourage breastfeeding, the country report added.<\/p>\n<p>The UN Children&#8217;s Fund said 28 out of every 1,000 Filipinos die under the age of five. <\/p>\n<p>While that marks a significant improvement from the 56 per 1000 deaths recorded in 1990 it remains above the country&#8217;s stated goal of lowering infant mortality rates<\/a> to 19 per 1,000.<\/p>\n<p>Macachor said similar mass breastfeeding<\/a> events would help combat stereotypes and encourage mothers to exercise their right and shrug off taboos against nursing babies in public. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They should not be intimidated by people telling them to go breastfeed in the toilets, which is unsanitary,&#8221; she added.\n                                                                <\/p>\n<p class=\"news-relevant\">\n                                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"toolsicon ic-rel\" src=\"https:\/\/b98584f181.site.internapcdn.net\/tmpl\/v5\/img\/1x1.gif\" width=\"14\" height=\"16\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n                                        <b>Explore further:<\/b><br \/>\n                                        New moms moving toward the bottle<\/a>\n                                    <\/p>\n<footer class=\"post-floor clearfix\">\n                                    <!-- rating --><\/p>\n<p>                                                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"toolsicon icon-fbck\" src=\"https:\/\/b98584f181.site.internapcdn.net\/tmpl\/v5\/img\/1x1.gif\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" alt=\"feedback\" \/><br \/>\n                                                feedback to editors<br \/>\n                                            <\/a><\/p>\n<section class=\"copyright\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t                                                \u00a9 2017 AFP<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some 2,000 mothers in the Philippines breastfed their babies in public on Saturday in a gathering aimed at cutting infant deaths and dispelling taboos over the practice. To the upbeat sounds of local pop songs, hundreds of mothers suckled their babies inside a cavernous Manila stadium, some of them multitasking by feeding two children at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}