Fewer working Chinese women breast-feed

updated 3:53 p.m. ET Sept. 25, 2008

SHANGHAI, China - With one hand, Yang Aiping held her squirming 4-month-old son amid the crowd in the maternity hospital. With the other, she dug through her purse for the near-empty bag of milk powder she worried had sickened him.

"Is this brand OK?" she asked, holding up the packet of Bei Yin Mei formula. "I'm still not sure. I don't have time to watch the news."

Nor does she have the time to breast-feed her baby.

The number of Chinese women who rely on breast milk alone to feed their newborns has dropped as working mothers have less time to nurse and fall prey to advertising about the benefits of infant formulas.

Such economic pressures have taken China's tainted milk crisis to every corner of the country. They also explain why a country disgusted by an even deadlier fake baby formula scandal four years ago has been so badly hit again.

More than 54,000 children have been sickened by tainted milk products so far. Four deaths have been blamed on the products.

As the scandal grows, the World Health Organization and UNICEF are publicly declaring breast-feeding as the healthiest option for babies.

But it's not an option for many women like Yang, one of Shanghai's millions of migrant workers, who spends most of her waking hours on the job. Less than two months after giving birth, she stopped trying to pump her breasts before and after work on a construction site and switched to milk powder. She worried her own milk, and her time, was not enough.

Then the tainted milk scandal broke and, like millions of other Chinese parents, she suddenly had to ask if the formula she was feeding her son might kill him. Fortunately, Bei Yin Mei's infant formula was declared melamine-free by authorities and Yang's son was given a clean bill of health by doctors.

Breast-feeding rates in China declining
But thousands of other babies have been hospitalized with kidney stones or kidney failure from the milk powder they drank.

The melamine scandal follows one in 2004 when 12 babies in eastern China's Anhui province died of malnutrition after drinking fake powdered formula. More than 200 babies suffered wasted limbs and swollen heads — common symptoms of malnutrition.

Baby formula and other substitutes, such as soy milk, rice porridge, and cow or goat milk, are necessary staples in rural areas where many young parents are forced to leave their children at home with grandparents or relatives to find work in the cities.

"The countryside doesn't have any more young people. Even the young women who could breast-feed for you are gone," said Yang Li, a migrant worker from central Chongqing who was selling bags and watches along a Shanghai street. "It's difficult. You have to make money."

The latest figures from China's Ministry of Health show that 71.9 percent of mothers of infants under 4 months practiced breast-feeding in 2007. The rate is similar to that in the United States, but lower than in many European countries.

Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Turkey all have general breast-feeding rates above 90 percent.

But health experts say figures on China's nursing habits can be misleading because the number of mothers who exclusively breast-feed — who don't supplement breast milk with animal milk, commercial formula or other substitutes — is actually declining.

According to the Chinese Food and Nutrition Surveillance System, 76.6 percent of rural women exclusively breast-fed their children in the first four months of life in 1998. But by 2002, only 60 percent of rural women were exclusively breast-feeding their newborns.

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