- Breastfeeding significantly reduces healthcare usage and costs in early childhood
- Exclusively breastfed infants have fewer hospital admissions and GP consultations
- Increasing breastfeeding rates in deprived areas can promote health equity and save millions
Breastmilk can promote equitable child health while also saving healthcare costs by lowering childhood illnesses and healthcare utilization in the early years, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Tomi Ajetunmobi of the Glasgow Centre for Population Health in Scotland and colleagues (1).
Benefits of Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding has previously been shown to help infants develop and avoid disease. Low rates of breastfeeding in more economically poor areas in Scotland, as well as other developed countries, are likely to contribute to early childhood health disparities. However, government initiatives aimed at improving child health have made little headway, and more research on the effectiveness of treatments may be required.
Breastfeeding Linked to Lower Hospitalization in Children
The current study analyzed administrative statistics from 502,948 newborns born in Scotland between 1997 and 2009. There was information available on whether newborns were breastfed during the first 6-8 weeks, the occurrence of ten common children conditions from birth to 27 months, and the specifics of hospital admissions, primary care consultations and prescriptions.
During the first 6-8 weeks of life, 27% of the infants in the research were exclusively breastfed, 9% mixed-fed, and 64% formula-fed. The proportion of exclusively breastfed newborns ranged between 45% in the least deprived areas and 13% in the most deprived areas.
The researchers discovered that, within each quintile of deprivation, exclusively breastfed newborns consumed fewer healthcare services and had lower expenses than infants fed any formula milk. In the first six months of life, breastfed infants had lower average hospital care expenses per admission (£42) than formula-fed infants (£79), as well as fewer GP consultations (1.72, 95% CI: 1.66 – 1.79) than formula-fed infants (1.92, 95% CI: 1.88 – 1.94). The researchers concluded that if all formula-fed infants had been exclusively breastfed for the first 6-8 weeks of life, they might have saved at least £10 million in healthcare expenditures.
References:
- Levelling up health in the early years: A cost-analysis of infant feeding and healthcare
Ajetunmobi O, McIntosh E, Stockton D, Tappin D, Whyte B (2024) Levelling up health in the early years: A cost-analysis of infant feeding and healthcare. PLoS ONE 19(5): e0300267. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0300267
Source-Medindia
