China promotes breast-feeding amid tainted milk scare
With her one-day-old son propped against her in a hospital bed nursing, Qi Wenjuan says she has no desire to feed her child with infant formula.
With her one-day-old son propped against her in a hospital bed nursing, Qi Wenjuan says she has no desire to feed her child with infant formula.
“I don’t trust baby formula,” the first-time mother said, lying in the maternity ward of Beijing’s Tiantan Hospital. “There are too many quality problems.”
Qi, however, is a rarity in China, where most newborns are fed – sometimes exclusively – with infant formula within the first six months of their lives.
China’s rates of breast-feeding are among the world’s lowest. But health workers and the government are trying to revive the practice, and a drumbeat of safety scares over commercially produced milk is giving them new leverage. Visitors to internet forums for new parents are posting comments about the benefits of breast-feeding and the potential hazards with formula.