Philippine mothers take part in the event to promote breastfeeding (AFP Photo/NOEL CELIS) |
Manila (AFP) - Hundreds of Philippine mothers simultaneously nursed their babies in public on Sunday, some of them two at a time, in a government-backed mass breastfeeding event aimed at combating child deaths.
About 1,500
women, some of them wearing tiaras and superhero T-shirts, sat on the vast
floor of a Manila stadium and let their babies suckle to the beat of dance
music.
"Breastfeeding
is love. It is difficult, but we do it for love," said Abegirl Limjap, a
pregnant 38-year-old property manager in a "Super Mom" superhero
costume as she nursed her two boys, one aged five and the other 11 months.
The annual
event aims to draw public support for a government campaign to get more mothers
to switch to breast milk from infant formula, organiser Rose Padua told AFP.
The World
Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund recommend that
children be given breast milk within the first hour of birth and be exclusively
breastfed for their first six months.
Globally
however, three in five babies are not breastfed early, putting them at higher
risk of death and disease, the two UN agencies said in a report earlier this
year.
Twenty-seven
children out of every thousand died before the age of five in the Philippines
in 2016, according to WHO data.
WHO and
UNICEF estimate about half of Filipino babies were initiated into early breastfeeding
in 2013, barely changed from 46 percent in 2003.
"It's
an empowering moment," said first-time mother Joyce Balido, 29, as she
cradled her four-month-old girl at the mass breastfeeding event.
"It
was very difficult to establish a milk supply at first. I am sleep-starved but
I committed myself to have my daughter exclusively breast-fed," added
Balido, an engineer.
Sixty-one
other mass breastfeeding events were held in other Philippine cities over the
weekend, said Padua, the event organiser.
She said
the country was on course to beat last year's attendance of 4,775 nursing
mothers in 25 events.
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