Salma Hayek breast-feeds sick African baby

Actress Salma Hayek has been shown breast-feeding a stranger's sick baby during a visit to a clinic in Sierra Leone.

• The Hollywood star, in the war-torn region to highlight the work of Unicef, acted instinctively when told that the baby boy was hungry and his own mother had stopped producing milk.
• “That was amazing,” Hayek, 42, said afterwards. “I’m in Africa, in Sierra Leone, and I was able to feed an ill baby that was very hungry.”
• The actress and Ugly Betty producer is still breast-feeding her own 17-month-old daughter, Valentina. Speaking to the ABC show Nightline, she said: “I thought about it – am I being disloyal to my child by giving her milk away? And I actually think that my baby would be very proud to be able to share her milk. When she grows up I’m going to make sure that she continues to be a generous, caring person, and I think that’s the best thing I can give her as a mother.”
• In the programme, Hayek recounted a story about her great-grandmother. “She and my grandmother were in a little Mexican village and they found a woman on the street inconsolably crying, and the baby was also crying, crying, crying. My great-grandmother went up to her and asked what was wrong, what was the matter, and the woman said, ‘My baby is very hungry and I have no more milk.’ And in the street my great-grandmother took the baby from her, took her breast out and breast-fed that baby who instantly stopped crying and went peacefully to sleep. I was really impressed by that story.”
• Men in Sierra Leone often discourage their wives from breast-feeding, according to the report, because they will not have sexual relations with a breast-feeding woman. As a consequence, many babies suffer from malnutrition.
• Sierra Leona has the highest infant death rate in the world, and one in five child deaths are from tetanus, a disease which can be prevented with a simple vaccine. Hayek was there as part of a Unicef project in conjunction with Pampers, which is donating one vaccine for each special pack sold.