Breastfeeding week - help us save lives
Date: Friday, July 28, 2006 @ 08:28:35 UTC
Topic:
This world breastfeeding week (1-7 August) we are asking people around the world to spot companies breaking the code and report them.
Breastfeeding week - Help protect children from companies who place profits before health | | 26/07/2006 | Improving breastfeeding rates globally could save the lives of 3,900 a day.
However companies continue to promote artificial feeding in ways that undermine breastfeeding - putting profits before children's health.
This breastfeeding week is the 25th anniversary of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. We need your help to spot violations and report them |
 Breastmilk provides all the energy and nutrients an infant needs, stimulates immune systems and protects them from disease. Breastmilk substitutes, on the other hand, carry a high risk of infection and can be fatal in infants, particularly in places with limited access to sanitation.
Even in the UK, a bottle-fed baby is far more likely to be hospitalised with stomach illness than a breastfed one. They are also at higher risk of respiratory and ear infections. Studies show that breastfed babies are less likely to die of cot death or suffer from allergies or obesity in later life (more on the benefits of breastfeeding).
 So why do few of the 129 million babies born each year receive optimal breastfeeding and many not breastfed at all? Companies are continuing to promote artificial feeding in ways that undermine breastfeeding - putting profits before children's health in violation of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. (more about the code).
This world breastfeeding week (1-7 August) we are asking people around the world to spot companies breaking the code and report them.
 The Code states there should be no advertising or any other form of promotion of infant formulas, follow-on milks, feeding bottles or teats.
If you see companies breaking these minimum requirements, please report them in these three easy steps –
1) Download this Quick & Easy Monitoring form
2) Fill in one form for each violation you find (telling us who, what, when and where!)
3) Send the completed forms (together with pictures if you have any) to Jonathan Purchase at Save the Children, 1 St John’s Lane, London EC1M 4AR or by e-mail to j.purchase@savethechildren.org.uk
What is a violation?
Companies may not:
- Promote their products to the public
- Use baby pictures or other idealizing picture or text on their baby milk and bottle and teat labels
- Give gifts or free samples to mothers or health workers or free supplies of baby milk to hospitals
- Seek direct or indirect contact with pregnant women or mothers of young children
- Promote baby foods or drinks for babies under 6 months old.
 Also Labels must include a prominent health warning in a language understood by the mother smf companies are limited to providing scientific and factual information to health workers, who are responsible under the Code for advising parents. (more about the monitoring)
Useful links -
International Baby Food Action Network website
World Breastfeeding Week
|  | | To read this article online ot to access any related downloads click here. | | Save the Children fights for children in the UK and around the world who suffer from poverty, disease, injustice and violence.
We work with them to find lifelong answers to the problems they face. | | For more information about our work visit our website www.savethechildren.org.uk |  |
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