"Splendid book." Sheila Kitzinger, natural childbirth author
"Excellent." Gillian Weaver, UK Association for Milk Banking
"Time for a global change of attitudes.  This book will help enormously to do just that."  Wah Wong, 30 years at Unicef

Mothers and their supporters continue to be in a life-and-death struggle with the milk formula industry and the global market. By 1996 only 1/3 of babies in the world were exclusively breastfed. As a result, at least 1.5 million infants, overwhelmingly in the South, die each year. People's immune systems are further undermined in countries where food is scarce but also where it is plentiful.

Breastfeeding, which protects the lives and health of infants and lays the basis for the health of the whole population, seems to be on the increase. But the attack against it has intensified. HIV/AIDS is the latest excuse for promoting breast milk substitutes. Yet while 4% of child deaths are attributed to HIV/AIDS, 60% are caused by malnutrition, largely the result of mothers' lack of food and formula use. It is AIDS which (like war) attracts massive funding, not food security.

The privatisation of the UN, to which we have traditionally looked to uphold hard-won international standards that kept the formula industry in check, now assists the pharmaceutical industry to join the attack on breastfeeding. Unicef, once the leading advocate of 'Breast is best', is now promoting formula, the first junk food, and making deals with McDonald's and Coca-Cola, the second junk food attack on our children.

Despite evidence that all babies thrive on breast milk, HIV+ mothers are accused of endangering their infants by breastfeeding. In some countries they can even lose custody of their children if they breastfeed. UN agencies, along with governments, are now distributing formula, and are themselves breaking the World Health Organisation's Code which regulates industry's marketing of formula.

More women are in positions of power, but women are no less penalised for their biological and social contribution, which is devalued and "dissed". Women worldwide demand recognition that the production of life and caring for it work they do outside the Market, has social value. What, they keep asking, is more important than this?

The attack on breastfeeding is an attack on all of us, on our right to the best, from birth, freely given. With The Milk of Human Kindness we see not only the value of breastfeeding, but the forces for and against this caring work of women, in fact for and against life itself. The book introduces us to the new movement against "the baby killers" and the urgent action needed now to protect new life. 

Published by Crossroads Books on behalf of the International Women Count Network 
Website: http://allwomencount.net