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Countering decades of promoting "breast is best" for infant nutrition, the U.N. has issued recommendations intended to discourage women infected with the AIDS virus from breast-feeding. The much-debated step aims at preventing transmission of HIV, the AIDs virus, from mothers to babies in what United Nations officials say is "a runaway epidemic" in many developing countries.
In its directive, the United Nations said it was deeply concerned that advising infected mothers not to breast-feed might lead many mothers who are not infected to stop breast-feeding. To reduce that possibility, it is advising governments to consider bulk purchases of formula and other milk substitutes and to dispense them mainly through prescriptions.
But in affected areas, some anxious women and families are beginning to demand that their governments provide information about HIV and breast-feeding, and to offer alternatives, the United Nations said. The rights of children to be born uninfected are also being invoked for personal and public health reasons because an overwhelming majority of infected children and adults in developing countries are doomed to die from the lack of anti-HIV drugs and standard health care. The epidemic has altered population demographics in some African countries.
For entire article, see "AIDS Brings a Shift on Breast-feeding", New York Times, Geneva, July 25, 1998.
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