Haiti - F*****g Nestle is at it already.

[foxytocin]

here now what can I do about it?

re water aid: making any water safe does not have to mean carting bottled water to communities. It can mean dropping water purification tablets into water that is currently available but unsafe to drink. It means having clean containers to catch rainfall.

Water purification tablets are more easily transported and distributed than bottled water which comes in like a gift from the great white hope and which over time is unsustainable.

the sympathy is in the right place but not a very practical solution in the long medium or short term.

Great thread! Great links. So much more educating than anything I've read in the papers.

TikTok you are brilliant.

Thanks also for the Gabrielle Palmer link. Desperate to get round to Moondog's plump''' whatever it is link but have to do school run.

Riven: There is no starvation, yet, in Haiti. The aid agencies prioritise breastfeeding, wherever possible, when it comes to ensuring the nutrition of infants in a disaster zone - this is best done by finding someone to breastfeed the baby and this may involve relactation for some of the women. This helps reduce the risk of death and infection in the immediate term, in the short term, and ensures the protection of a bf culture in the longer term (when the aid is no longer there).

She does not need clean water to relactate - though she needs clean water to survive. She does not need any more clean water to relactate/feed another woman's child than she would need for herself.

How confident you are about what Haiti needs. How confident you are about what is 'more important than worrying about relactation or whatever'. You are so confident that you can say that 'any' clean water and 'any' calories that get there are worth it.

Bottled water may have a place in the immediate term, for sure - but it is not sustainable. The risks of bottled water are not to health, and so bottled water is at least safe in the short term.

Formula is not safe, in the immediate, short or long term....so its use has to be minimised, for the sake of infant survival and gift horses have to be looked very, very carefully in the mouth.

I honestly have no idea why this is so hard for people to understand.

I honestly dont see the problem, REALLY I DONT, Yes I know all about nestle and their despicable one track money making hatred that I have off them, As they will try and make money NO matter what the costs are.

BUT Haiti NEEDS WATER and READY MADE FM and FOOD, hundreds of people, children are in desperate need for these basic needs, as simply some children's mothers have died.

I also find it a bit bizarre at this one way track of thinking,and not putting peoples feeling and circumstances into the equation, that a mother (wet nurse) might not want to breastfeed another child if she has lost her own baby. That also needs to be thought off, and also that they might not want to wet nurse as they might want to keep their own supply for their own babies. Im not saying this is true, but it DOES need to be considered.

Their is a need for this aid whether we agree with it or not, until FULL aid can get into the island.

I couldn't care less if the aid was supplied by nestle or Daffy Duck, it needed whether we like it or not.

Im just so sad that people who can see the detrimental affects of a disaster like this, can still reprimand any help given, and make it yet into another BF vs FF debate.

That's what is SAD.

I did have to LOL, at the purification tablet idea also, their is currently over 100,000 dead bodies surrounding Haiti atm ALL will now be rotting and disease spread is more that likely going to be rife, We do not know the water is SAFE to drink for the Haitian people due to these anomalies, BOTTLE water is safe for them atm IN TIME.

when the disaster zone is clear and help in order, then maybe the £100+ million from the world bank can rectify this problem when it aids recovery and reconstruction.

LittleMissHappy: How do we get all these bottles of water into Port Au Prince?

1 liter of water weighs 1 kilogramme.

1 thousand liter bottles weighs 1 tonne.

right now the airport is turning away aid flights

the Port is damaged. roads are damaged.

how do you move the bottled water that Nestle and others have donated?

They need lorries not just ot move the water you want but the food too.

As for the rest of the points you made, read the thread and the links.

No one is making this into bf v ff...or they shouldn't. Your post does this, though, LittleMissHappy.

It's to do with looking gift horses in the mouth, and underlining the need for careful distribution of infant formula so as not to make a dire situation even worse...so as not to add the bodies of previously healthy babies to the piles...so as not to increase the death by infection. Large donations of infant formula from the manufacturers have caused serious problems in the past (read the links) and there is no need for these terrible things to be repeated.

There are protocols for the distribution of infant formula and the support of breastfeeding in a disaster - I have read these and none of them include anything about forcing traumatised women to feed other people's babies. But no doubt the warning against this by comfortable women in the West, pontificating in front of their computers, will be listened to by the highly experienced aid workers on the ground, even though there is nothing that suggests they are likely to do this to the people they are helping

I already said that short term use of bottled water is safe.

To add: short term use of bottled water is safe, but as foxytocin says, transporting it is difficult, and expensive. But its use is not actively dangerous - unlike the use of formula.

"Shortly after arriving in Haiti Friday following a nearly 20-hour journey from the Dominican Republic, David Gazashvili, the head of emergency response for CARE, first had to find a shipment of water-purification tablets that had arrived at the airport. Two large pallets with enough tablets to treat water for 60,000 people had been shipped from Panama the day before. Purification tablets clean and disinfect water so that it can be consumed or used for other purposes.

"The airport is very disorganized," he said, as he and his team prepared to set out from CARE's undamaged headquarters in the Pétionville area of the city to find the tablets."

taken from here

Foxytocin that's a great link - sums up what we've been trying to get across about the water.

"clean water is normally a scarcity in Haiti. Only 50% of the country's population regularly has access to clean water, and only 19% has appropriate sanitation, according to the World Health Organization."

This is why formula can be so dangerous

thank you TT. you are an Angel. I think I have started to bang on about bottled water which has been repeatedly mentioned earlier because so many of us really want to help but can't know that our good will gestures really can only make things more complicated for people on teh ground unless we are made aware.

A FB friend who really ought to know better, she grew up 4 doors down from me in the 3rd world but now lives in Miami was asking her FB friends to donate bottled water. Erm, it is taking up space in the shipping cargo (if it ever reaches a shipping container) instead of something else that is easily more transportable and just as vital.

So even if they have the clean water to mix the formula with, what are they going to use to feed it with ? With high rates of EBF I doubt most Haitian families would have bottles - nor the facilities to sterilise, particularly not in the current circumstances. Reports say that most Haitians are so desperate for water that they are drinking filthy untreated water as they are so desperate to drink anything.

Furthermore the hospital infrastructure (what little there was) has now totally collapsed. Use of formula (particularly in less than ideal conditions) is known to lead to severe diarrhoea and other gastrointestinal problems, for which hospitalisation is required. Where would they treat them ? They can't even treat people with gaping head wounds.

And once the aid agencies have used up all the water, what then ? Will the water supply be safe and sterile, somehow I doubt it. So you end up with the situation that babies are given formulas mixed with dirty water. Or that formula is diluted greatly in an attempt to save money or to flog it on the black market. Rice is currently being sold at $4 per bag on the streets of Port-au-Prince (average Haitian lives on a dollar a day) - what are the chances of a valuable commodity such as formula not getting the same treatment ?

I'm with Tiktok and the others here. Big brand multinationals use the simplistic arguments of "they need it" to give a respectable veneer to their aggressive marketing

I have read the thread and the links thankyou, I have neither agreed or disagreed with them. I have a different view point from you, nothing wrong with that.

and I can ask you all the question you have asked, how do you propose to get the purification tablets in also, and also get fresh water, if aid is being refused? their is no heavy machinery to dig, the water available might not to be safe due to the bodies and also rubble. People are starving, read the news! people are fighting for everything water, food, all stores have been whiped out of everything, not just by looters but by families doing everything they can to survive.

I understand what you are saying, and I am not disagreeing with you, but they do need this aid AT THIS TIME whether we like it or not.

Im not turning this into a BF Vs FF either, but I can see this help is needed.

For the people arguing that breastfeeding should somehow wait until later and the priority for now should be ready-made formula - would it help to picture cartons of safe, sterilised, ready-made formula popping out of each bfing woman's chest, rather than picturing the act of bfing?

The effect is the same, generally - clean safe milk made locally requiring no transportation, power, water, or special education. Those women are the closest reliable source of safe ready-made baby milk - it's natural for them to be used first.

Not trying to use local lactating women first is like walking past unopened cases of ready-made milk and rushing to the airport to get the flown-in stuff instead.

Obviously there are situations where you still need formula - I'm sure orphanages with many babies and toddlers are an example - but it still makes more sense to use the local safe baby milk wherever possible.

Has anyone posted the link to the Red Cross blog? Couldn't see it so apols if old news but it very eloquently explains IMO why cash is what is needed rather than the PR exercise of donating 'stuff' (whatever that might be) when crisis has struck

im not arguing also that BF over rides FM, im just saying that it is needed.

or that bf needs to wait, just that its needed

Riven - grow up and stop trying to score points.

I am aware that people are desperately hungry in Haiti and they are frightened they will not get fed.

Of course they need food. And water.

You implied that starving women are unable to breastfeed. This situation has not been reached yet - but if women can feed the babies, then the babies don't need to be fed with formula.

I am bowing out now. I feel very uncomfortable that the plight of desperate people is being used as some sort of debating society football. The situation is clear: formula distribution needs managing to prevent babies dying. Bottled water is expensive and inefficient to transport so other means of achieving safe water is needed. Breastfeeding needs protecting in disaster situations, and on past experience we cannot trust corporate interests with this, and indiscriminate donating can make things a whole lot worse.

LadyBiscuit - excellent link.

blogs.redcross.org.uk/emergencies/2010/01/help-not-hinder-haiti/ and here it is again

I've been to Haiti twice on extended stays

I know a lot of Haitians. They are mainly illiterate, certainly had no access before this to phones/ I can't make contact with them

If they knew people were bleating about the evils being offered free calories and clean water at the time of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters the world has ever known they would think the world is even crazier than they already know it to be.

I am not going to waste any more time here arguing with obsessives but the idea of aid workers sitting down amid looters, rotting bodies, rubble etc and instructing grandmothers (assuming they are still alive in the first place) on how to relactate is absurd. Babies need nourishment they need it now.

I have read the links btw

mrsshackleton - have you read the Red Cross link? This isn't about bf vs formula feeding IMO - it's a much bigger issue.

mrsshacleton, the are arguing about re-lactate, which has nothing really to do with the OP tbh. You cannot stop the aid going in as its needed.

And one that I am also about also, as for people here is not as easy as they are trying to make it out to be. (especially form a wet nurse point of view, for the reason I gave above).

I hope you get to contact your loved ones.

I have the Red Cross link, it doesn't liquid food, prepared formula

Of course some donations are not helpful, I dont think the above two fall into that category. And of course bf would be preferable to ff but this is a desperate, desperate situation

LittleMrsH, thank you. They're not loved ones, I don't want to exaggerate the relationship, but they are friends

It's because it's a desperate situation that breastfeeding needs protecting...it's not ideology, or preference, or what would be nice. It's to save lives and the aid agencies speak as one on this.

Relactation is only one aspect of protecting child health by supporting bf. It is not a strange or unknown thing in many communities - no idea about Haiti, but the aid agencies' protocols get them to explore it, and if it is acceptable, it is supported.

Babies need nourishment now - of course they do. The ones who need formula should get it. But many can and should be breastfed not as a lifestyle choice but as a life saver.

This is not 'obsessive'.