New Study Says Lack of Breastfeeding Costs Lives and Billions of Dollars

Mama · 04-06-2010, 02:25 AM

<a href=" http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-1616v1?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFOR MAT=&fulltext=melissa+bartick&searc hid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevan ce&resourcetype=HWCIT">Here are the amazing results of a new study:</a>

If 90% of US families could comply with medical recommendations to breastfeed exclusively for 6 months, the United States would save $13 billion per year and prevent an excess 911 deaths, nearly all of which would be in infants ($10.5 billion and 741 deaths at 80% compliance). 

The study was published today in <a href=" http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-1616v1?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFOR MAT=&fulltext=melissa+bartick&searc hid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevan ce&resourcetype=HWCIT">Pediatrics</a>, the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

One of the study's authors was quoted in a <a href=" http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/05/breastfeeding.costs/?hpt=T2">CNN story</a>:

Dr. Melissa Bartick, one of the new study's co-authors, says the vast majority of extra costs incurred each year could be saved "if 80 to 90 percent of women exclusively breastfed for as little as four months and if 90 percent of women would breastfeed some times until six months." Bartick is a hospitalist -- a doctor who specializes in the care of hospitalized patients -- at Cambridge Health Alliance, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and a mother of two.

Bartick and her co-author Arnold Reinhold found that most of the excess costs are due to premature deaths. Nearly all, 95 percent of these deaths, are attributed to three causes: sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); necrotizing enterocolitis, seen primarily in preterm babies and in which the lining of the intestinal wall dies; and lower respiratory infections such as pneumonia.

Breastfeeding has been shown to reduce the risk of all of these and seven other illnesses studied by the study authors.

Bartick calculates $10.56 million for each of the estimated 911 children's deaths. Researchers also included the direct costs of health care and parent's time missed from work. They did not include the cost of formula, which is another added cost for moms who don't breastfeed. 




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