10 Mai 2016
| Among the countries that have any laws on marketing of breast-milk substitutes, globally:
· Just over half sufficiently prohibit advertising and promotion.
· Fewer than half prohibit the provision to health facilities of free or low-cost supplies of breast-milk substitutes.
· Just over half prohibit gifts to health workers or members of their families.
· The scope of products to which legislation applies remains limited. Many countries’ laws cover infant formula and ‘follow-up formula’, but only one third explicitly cover products intended for children aged 1 year and up.
· Fewer than half of countries ban nutrition and health claims on designated products.
IBFAN, with its International Code Documentation Centre (ICDC) taking the lead, has closely cooperated with WHO and UNICEF to prepare this report. The results are in line with the findings reported in ICDC’s own State of the Code 2016.
“IBFAN hopes that the report will lead more countries to improve and enforce existing legislation so that breastfeeding will have a better chance and save more lives,” says Annelies Allain, Director of IBFAN’s ICDC. “Legislation needs to keep pace with new marketing strategies and this report will help policy makers to do so.”
The report, Marketing of breast-milk substitutes: national implementation of the International Code – Status report 2016, includes tables showing, country by country, which Code measures have and have not been enacted into law. It also includes case studies on countries that have strengthened their laws or monitoring systems for the Code in recent years. These include Armenia, Botswana, India and VietÂÂÂ Nam.
Monitoring is essential to enforcement
Monitoring is essential to detect violations and report them to the appropriate authorities so they can intervene and stop such activities. Yet, only 32 countries report having a monitoring mechanism in place, and of those, few are fully functional. Among the countries with a formal monitoring mechanism, fewer than half publish the results, and just six countries have dedicated budgets or funding for monitoring and enforcement.
WHO and UNICEF have recently established a Global Network for Monitoring and Support for Implementation of the Code (NetCode) to help strengthen countries’ and civil society capacity to monitor and effectively enforce Code laws. Key NGOs, including IBFAN, Helen Keller International and Save the Children, academic centres and selected countries have joined this network.
Why breastfeed?
Globally, nearly two out of three infants are not exclusively breastfed for the recommended 6 months—a rate that has not improved in two decades. Breast milk is the ideal food for infants. It is safe, clean and contains antibodies which help protect against many common childhood illnesses. Breastfed children perform better on intelligence tests, are less likely to be overweight or obese and less prone to diabetes later in life. Women who breastfeed also have a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancers. Inappropriate marketing of breast-milk substitutes continues to undermine efforts to improve breastfeeding rates and duration worldwide.
New analyses have revealed that increasing breastfeeding to near-universal levels could save the lives of more than 820 000 children under the age of five and 20 000 women each year. It could also add an estimated US$300 billion into the global economy annually, based on improvements in cognitive ability if every infant was breastfed until at least 6 months of age and their expected increased earnings later in life. Boosting breastfeeding rates would significantly reduce costs to families and governments for treatment of childhood illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and asthma.