What Really Happened with the Breastfeeding Scandal in Geneva

by Susan Yoshihara
for The Hill


After the fire bombings leveled Tokyo in the Pacific War, my father-in-law watched his parents bury his infant sister, who starved to death. His mother, malnourished in her poverty, had no breast milk to give. Formula could have saved his sister’s life and his mother a lifetime of guilt.

It is a shocking and sad sign of our times that the Trump administration finds itself excoriated this week for taking a step toward helping poor women in similar situations.

U.S. delegates to the World Health Organization in Geneva three months ago stand accused of greedy motives for seeking to expand information about breastfeeding alternatives. They were accused of not caring about women and children. They were accused of threatening a poor country’s national security to funnel billions of dollars to U.S. corporations.

What really happened is that a U.S. delegation, including women who were experienced breastfeeding advocates and savvy negotiators, bested the entrenched interests of a powerful activist lobby in a fair fight and for good reasons. As the New York Times accurately reported, this “stunned” global health officials who had gotten all too accustomed to the status quo, including the previous U.S. administration’s reluctant acquiescence to the 2016 version of the resolution.

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Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D., has taken part in United Nations negotiations on maternal and child health since 2006 as a delegation member and civil society participant. She is senior vice president for research at the Center for Family and Human Rights in Washington.

 

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