Health experts have cautioned breast feeding mothers against sharing breast milk among newborn babies without ascertaining their HIV and AIDS status.
The experts says a mother can breastfeed a child that is not her own, but this should come only after the mother is tested and found to be HIV-negative.
Three health experts, Drs. John Egbuta, Bisola Animashaun and Alfred Dion gave such advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos on Friday.
Egbuta, a nutritionist with the United Nations Children Education Fund in Lagos, said that breastfeeding was beneficial for babies and that it would not be a bad idea for another woman to breast feed an unweaned baby.
Egbuta said: “It is very possible and very advisable for a mother to breast feed another child, but before then, that mother that is going to breast feed the child should be tested very well, particularly tested for HIV.
“Because that is one infection that may have a far reaching damage to the child that is being breast fed.
“Breast milk is breast milk.
“It is very beneficial to the child, because sometimes when a mother loses her life in the course of child-bearing, the child’s grandmother can be made to breastfeed the child.”
Also speaking, Animashaun, a consultant paediatrician with the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, said, however, that breast milk sharing was not commonly practiced in the country.
Animashaun said that it could still be encouraged, especially when it was safe in order to promote breast feeding.
Animashaun said: “Breastfeeding babies was necessary, especially in the first six months to one year of their lives, in order to promote good health.
“If it will take another mother to breast feed a baby who is not hers, then it can be welcomed.
“However, there should have been screenings done to show that such a mother is not infected or is taking some kind of medication that can be detrimental to the child’s health.”
Also speaking, Dion, a public health physician at a Lagos-based private hospital, Prime Hospital, said that the only challenge in breast milk sharing was bonding with mother and child.
Dion said: “It can be confusing for the child when he or she is being breast fed by another mother, because breast feeding is one way a mother feels bonded with her child.
“Also, in some cultures, a baby breast fed by another mother can be regarded as a sibling to the mother’s other children.
“And so when those children grow up, for instance, and are attracted to each other as friends, they will not be allowed intimacy, because they both suckled from the same mother.”
Two mothers, who spoke to NAN, said they could not practice breast milk sharing.
They said they did not feel comfortable with the idea.
A receptionist and a mother of three, Oyinbo, said that she had never heard of it and that breast feeding was a personal experience for a mother.
She said: “I will not feel comfortable breastfeeding another woman’s baby and will not either with mine being fed by another.
“I will rather give my baby formula if, for instance, I am not lactating or there is a form of illness.”
Another mother, a 30-year-old expectant mother, Shomefun, said she would not feel bonded to the other baby and that bonding was important to her.
She said: “Breastfeeding is a special time a woman has with a baby and letting another mother breastfeed my baby would defeat it.
“I do not think it should be encouraged because breast milk is like the blood of a mother and feeding another baby is like giving that baby my blood.”
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