UNICEF: Breast Milk Does a Baby Good

In an era when obesity is a major health issue in more affluent countries, it is easy to forget that more than one-quarter of all young children in the developing world are underweight, the cardinal measure of malnutrition, a new report by UNICEF documents.

Underweight children are at increased risk for infection, delayed growth and diminished intellectual capacity. Paradoxically, underweight infants may also be more likely to become overweight adults.

In all, 27 percent of children younger than 5 in developing countries are small for their age.

The problem is worst in South Asia; 48 percent of children in Nepal and Bangladesh are underweight, 47 percent in India and 38 percent in Pakistan. It is also the only region where a higher fraction of girls rather than boys is underweight. Early marriage, large families and lack of education for girls apparently contribute to that risk.

In contrast, 8 percent of Chinese children are underweight.

"In China, the status of women is different," said Rainer Gross, UNICEF's director of nutrition. "That has a lot to do with the nutritional status in children."

A practice that greatly increases an infant's chances of being healthy and normal weight is breast-feeding exclusively or at least the first six months of life. It is especially important that no water or other substance be given in the first hour of life, before the baby receives the mother's colostrum -- milk loaded with disease-fighting antibodies. Anything before that "is a deadly liquid," Gross said.

But the reality is that just over one-third of infants in developing countries drink only breast milk for their first half-year. The rate ranges from 43 percent in East Asia to 20 percent in West and Central Africa.

-- David Brown