IN A letter (Sowetan May 18) Cilla Webster says Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi wants to ban baby formula and wrongly calls him idiotic.

In fact, Motsoaledi says he is worried that only 25percent of women breast-feed despite the high nutritional value of breast milk.

Webster would have led people to disregard this very critical and healthy form of feeding to infants.

I also support her when she says chances that are with formula many infants might die, especially in rural areas where, due to illiteracy, people do not understand instructions or might not sterilise the bottles as required since they don't have required utensils.

Here is a minister who is worried about the majority in rural areas, whose babies are at risk of dying rather than surviving.

He wants to reduce the child mortality rate in the country in line with Millennium Development Goals, by promoting breast-feeding, yet he is accused of taking us two centuries back.

Maybe Webster should familiarise herself with poverty statistics in our country and the dire influence of the Western lifestyle on our communities .

Maybe Webster should interact with the office of the minister to get a better understanding of why she made such an indictment.

Many children get sick or die because of non-adherence to formula instructions and because many of those children are mainly poor and African.

Webster will not care but will rush to papers calling our hardworking minister an idiot.

Reginald Sethosa, Modimolle