Breastfeeding Around the World: Preparation and Storage of Formula

The ability to store prepared formula is an issue. This is a small rural village in Uganda in the middle 1980's:

There is no electricity here.

This is the main street of a more developed village, also in Uganda in the middle 1980's.

There are electricity wires and telephone wires that work occasionally.

This is a camp for Cambodian refugees in Thailand in the early 1980's:

There are no wires anywhere, the main mode of transportation is bicycles.

This picture (also taken in Uganda in the mid 1980's) shows women carrying firewood on their heads.

A mother would have to start up the fire to boil the water for her baby's formula. She does not have a refrigerator, so she can't make up a whole day's supply of formula. She can make up one bottle at a time. She probably only has one bottle. After feeding the baby she needs to boil the bottle and more water to cool for the next bottle. Two and half or three hours later when the baby is ready to be fed again, she has to go through the whole process again. Every time she gets a fire going she uses more of the precious firewood that may be needed for cooking.

So what actually happens? She uses the same bottle over without cleaning it. This becomes a perfect media for bacteria to grow in. If money is running out at the end of the month she will water down the formula and give the baby less formula than is needed and the baby's nutrition suffers.

One cannot water down breast milk; it comes full strength from maternal breasts.