Breastfeeding UNICEF cont...
In addition to providing children with all the necessary nutrients and hydration, breastfeeding provides emotional and psychological benefits to both the baby and the mother, and helps families avoid additional expenses on formulas, bottles and, by promoting the baby's better health, it also reduces expenses on medical consultations and medicines.
Benefits for babies
In addition to providing all the necessary nutrients and hydration, breastfeeding helps prevent gastrointestinal and respiratory infections, obesity, diabetes, leukemia, allergies, childhood cancer, hypertension and high cholesterol. It can also help prevent infection with COVID-19 infection.
Children who are breastfed have a lower risk of mortality in the first year of life than those who are not.4.
On the other hand, it has also been observed that breastfeeding is associated with long-term cognitive development and IQ, which, in turn, is associated with the level of education and income a person receives.5.
Benefits for moms
Breastfeeding not only benefits the babies but also the mothers, since in the short term it helps their physical recovery, for example, it decreases the risk of hemorrhage after birth and reduces the risk of postpartum depression.
In the long term, it contributes to lowering the chances of developing ovarian cancer, breast cancer, type II diabetes, hypertension, heart attacks, anemia and osteoporosis.
Benefits to society
Breastfeeding contributes to the development of countries by helping to reduce the costs of treating diseases such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension, among others.
In Mexico, it is estimated that the cost associated with the health of the child due to poor breastfeeding practice ranges from $745.6 million to $2,416.5 million annually, and of these figures the cost of infant formula represents 11 to 38%6 .
In addition, breastfeeding helps in the care of the environment as it does not produce waste since it avoids the use of polluting materials for advertising, packaging and transportation.
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