Starving mothers can't feed babies as Aleppo runs out of milk, only 5,000 cans left

Aleppo: There is a shortage of milk for babies in Syria’s war-torn Aleppo city, where newborns are surviving only on baby formula as mothers are unable to breastfeed their children.

According to a report in Mirror, only 5,000 cans of baby formula is left in the war-torn city and the stock will last only for a month.

“The city is down to its final 5,000 cans of formula. That’s hardly enough to cover a quarter of the city’s children and for one month at most,” Ali Sheikh Omar, president of the Aleppo Relief Commission, said.

About 60 per cent of newborns in Aleppo are being fed formula as several mothers are starving due to which they are unable to breastfeed their babies. The city, which has been under constant attack, has not received supplies of formula cans since September.

Due to lack of breast milk and formula cans, mothers are feeding substitutes to their infants. A woman is forced to feed mixture water and rice to her six-month-old child, while others are feeding cow milk and tea to their children.

The substitutes are reportedly harmful for the newly born children and may also leave them malnourished.