Prof. Mohamed Emadeldin Salem

COGITO ERGO SUM
Dear guests and colleagues…
It is a sheer pleasure and a great privilege to be allowed to participate with those great humane persons entirely devoted to their vision.
Caring persons are those who share their time and concern, sparing no effort to advance a task they consider an obligation.
It is an obligation- or rather a mission on earth to be fulfilled through their blessed lucid minds and caring souls.
Their aspiration: unconditional support of exclusive breastfeeding…for at least the first six months.
The first six welcoming months of a fellow human newly introduced to our world seeking all the assistance he can get...
And if he still doesn't know-how. We do.
It is a moral and ethical obligation on our behalf.
A Lactation Consultant is a knowledgeable, compassionate friend.
A guide who knows "the way to" and "the how-to." Because he believes in "the wherefore."
Despite its being the "all-too-natural way," breastfeeding compels insistent support.
And that; would be the relentless endeavor of the Lactation Consultant.
Seeking to bring to a nicety, intertwined issues: socio-cultural psychological, and medical...the Lactation Consultant empowered by the lore (knowledge, wisdom, and experience), enlightens the path.
The stress of pregnancy (let alone lagging or complex), delivery, and the aftermath cannot be overemphasized.
Prematurity, twins, or surgical delivery, among many others, add up to that fretful mother constantly seeking if her baby was all right or what would be suitable for her baby and, what if not…
A new mother always needs support, sympathy, and empathy. Incredibly more so when messed around by myriads of opinionated minds…more so if authoritative! A mother or, even worse, a mother-in-law, to mention a few!
Such is our mission.
Such should be everyone's mission; as globally acknowledged, it is vital to do everything right… it remains imperative to do the right thing.
Despite all irrefutable evidence and numbers favoring and, by large, BF as the optimal source for baby nutrition…the brawl and skirmish against BF support are unlikely to refrain! One might still come across some mindboggling moot declaration advanced by some purported "prominent researcher" fantasizing that follows: "The benefits of breastfeeding have been greatly exaggerated!"
"Rumor has it that "much of the used marketing to persuade new mothers to breastfeed have been either wrong or out-of-date."
Decades of WHO and UNICEF baby nutrition strategies supporting BF are incontestable; still, they seem not to have reached their final goal.
One might wonder whether some of the probable reasons for that come from BF supporters themselves. Mea culpa.
Meaning poor strategies, flawed information, out-of-date material or communication tools, or perhaps be all of those. There seem to be two implementing tools if closing the circle for successful mind-leading methodologies. • Realistic, inspiring and persuasive, and perhaps also financial support • Recursive, insistent, and global network interaction. Yet the unorthodox standing of the manipulators behind forcing AF is factual and relentlessly omnipresent. The motive: mere bias.
The exponentially lucrative 'formula business' swelling to no less than half a billion dollars invested for formula insertion to babies within the "first 6 months" is real.
The golden 'first six months' expanse of all newborns remains the combat area between the devoted BF supporters versus those infant aggressors…
Pitifully, the apocalyptic campaigners are shown in their hostility biased by monetary yield. They amass the jackpot all the while babies do take the toll.
The good news is that efforts employed to smear BF credo have failed thus far to demonstrate the contrary scientifically.