In Pakistan, Save the Children held a ceremony to launch the report, where participants and speakers came to a unanimous agreement that breastfeeding is the most effective and tested method to protect children from killer diseases as soon as they are born.
“The lives of 95 babies could be saved every hour - 830,000 a year, if new mothers around the world breastfed immediately after giving birth”, said Dr. Qudsia Uzma, Director Health & Nutrition at Save the Children, while sharing the salient features of the report. She highlighted that if babies receive colostrum – the mother’s first milk – within an hour of birth, it will kick start the child’s immune system, making them three times more likely to survive. If the mother continues feeding for the next six months, then a child growing up in the developing world is up to 15 times less likely to die from killer diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea.
