RFI: Feeding Options available to mothers (2)
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Dear Cecelia and Penny:
Attached* please find a paper without the annexes, which I wrote re-
garding HIV, Breastfeeding. In it I challenge the WHO/UNAIDS recom-
mendations regarding breastfeeding and HIV positive mothers in low-
income, low-resource countries. I point you particularly to the dis-
cussion section starting on page 22 in which I outline the necessary
elements for safe artificial feeding and the probabilities that they
exist in most of Africa. Added to those on the chart are also other
issues such as stigma and cultural acceptance, which Penny raised. In
fact the recommendations should have been made with the outcome of
infant mortality in mind - not maternal to child transmission. Tar-
geting 14% of MTCT to breastfeeding is a very arbitrary number at
best. Infant mortality is a very clear outcome, which has centuries
of data and evidence to back it up.
I would be interested in hearing either of your opinions and or com-
ments on my paper, which was my MPH thesis. I will be revising it to
submit for publication in the near future.
Regards,
Patricia Burns
mailto:pburns@bu.edu
* From the Moderator: since we can't and don't want to send out at-
tachments via AFRO-NETS we have placed the above document from
Patricia J. Burns: "HIV, Breastfeeding, and Infant Mortality: Weigh-
ing the Impact of the Non-evidenced-based WHO/UNAIDS Recommendations
in the Low-income, Low-resource Countries of Sub-Saharan Africa" on
our web site for downloading (Adobe PDF format 24 pages, 77 kB):
http://www.afronets.org
click 'AFRO-NETS related Documents'
or download directly at:
http://www.afronets.org/docs/breastfeed.pdf
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