Donation for LLL Japan

La Leche League (LLL) Luxembourg held its biannual second-hand sale of children’s clothes in April and is donating to LLL Japan the profit from the sale together with donations and the income from a special Japanese stand: a total of 5.200 euros. The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan took more than 25.000 lives, including those still missing. Thousands of families lost all their belongings

LLL Japan and UNICEF Japan have organised a hotline counselling service, and Japanese LLL Leaders are accepting phone calls. LLL Japan also sent 10.000 pocket-tissue packets to the disaster areas, giving information for the hotline.

With the donation from Luxembourg, LLL Japan will launch a project to accredit “10 new LLL Leaders in the disaster areas” in order to offer mother-to-mother breastfeeding support. This project will support Leader Applicants from the affected areas with funding for:

• Application fee, Accreditation fee
• Book (Japanese edition of The Womanly Art Of Breastfeeding)
• Cost for one conference attendance during the application.

There are many advantages of breastfeeding during emergencies. Infants under 12 months of age are particularly vulnerable during emergencies because they need access to a consistent, reliable and safe food supply for their nutritional needs and protection from disease. During disasters the risks associated with the use of infant formula are enormous. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in emergency situations artificially fed babies have a 1300% increased risk of death from diarrhoeal disease as compared to babies that are breastfed.1 This risk is related to the diseases that flourish in the unsanitary conditions that often exist in emergency situations and the clean water and fuel required for safe artificial feeding is usually scarce. In addition, babies who are artificially fed are inherently more vulnerable to disease because they do not receive the disease-fighting antibodies that are in breast milk.2 Also, LLL values closeness and reassurance which breastfeeding can give to both mothers and babies in stressful situations.

The donation from Luxembourg will help LLL Japan support breastfeeding mothers and babies in the disaster area.