Salma Hayek is so fond of breastfeeding she suckled the starving child of a woman who couldn't express milk during a recent trip to Sierra Leone.

The actress, who told the Huffington Post website last year she was so hooked on breastfeeding her baby daughter Valentina, she felt "like an alcoholic", has revealed she helped a desperate mom in a refugee camp during a UNICEF fact-finding trip.

Appearing on Thursday's Today show, Hayek simply nodded as host Kathie Lee Gifford asked, "You found a child that was starving to death, the mother had no milk - and you nursed that baby?" And then said, "It's about women sticking together and we really need to help the children in any way we can."

And now the Mexican movie star and UNICEF activist is fighting to promote breastfeeding in Africa - because it helps boost the immune systems of at-risk babies.

Hayek explains, "It is the best thing you can do for your child, not only the bonding, that's how you build the immune system, so in a country like Africa imagine how important it is for the mothers to do that. But there is the belief that if you are breastfeeding you cannot have a sexual life, so the husbands of these women are really encouraging them to stop and this is just a taboo."

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(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)