Yahoo – AFP, Nina Larson, May 9, 2016
Geneva (AFP) - Legislation against the promotion of breast milk substitutes must be significantly tightened if global efforts to encourage breast feeding are to succeed, a UN report warned Monday.
Only about one child in three is exclusively breastfed for the first half year of life -- a rate that has not improved in two decades (AFP Photo/Johan Ordonez) |
Geneva (AFP) - Legislation against the promotion of breast milk substitutes must be significantly tightened if global efforts to encourage breast feeding are to succeed, a UN report warned Monday.
It is
widely recognised that breastfeeding carries huge health benefits, but
countries' failure to crack down on the marketing of substitutes means far too
many children are still being reared on formula, said the World Health
Organization, the UN children's agency UNICEF and the International Baby Food
Action Network (IBFAN).
A mother
breastfeeds her child in
suburban Manila on August 1, 2015
(AFP Photo/Jay
Directo)
|
"This
can distort parents' perceptions and undermine their confidence in breastfeeding,
with the result that far too many children miss out on its many benefits,"
he said in a statement.
Experts
have long extolled the health benefits of breastfeeding, pointing out that
breastfed children are healthier, perform better on intelligence tests and are
less likely to be overweight or suffer from diabetes later in life.
Women who
breastfeed also have a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer, research
shows.
A study in
the Lancet medical journal earlier this year estimated that more than 800,000
child deaths and 20,000 breast cancer deaths could be averted every year if
more babies were breastfed for longer.
Industry
pressure
WHO and
UNICEF recommend babies have nothing but breast milk for the first six months,
after which they should continue to breastfeed alongside other safe and
nutritionally-adequate foods until they are at least two.
But in
spite of the clear advantages, only about one child in three is exclusively
breastfed for the first half year of life -- a rate that has not improved in
two decades.
Countries
have agreed to try to push that number up to at least 50 percent by 2025, but
pressure from a growing breast-milk substitute industry is complicating those
efforts.
The
industry today rakes in sales of nearly $45 billion annually -- a figure which
is projected to grow to $70 billion by 2019.
Of the 194
countries studied, 135 had some form of legal measures linked to the WHO's
International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes.
That was a
clear improvement from 103 countries in 2011, but the report showed only 39 of
them covered all the Code's recommendations, including banning all advertising
and sample hand-outs of breast-milk substitutes, bans on labels making
nutritional or health claims and requiring products to inform consumers of the
superiority of breastfeeding over formula.
'Fudging
the truth'
And the
world's wealthiest countries, which are often the most business-friendly, tend
to have the weakest legislation.
Only six
percent of European countries provide comprehensive legislation and most have
just a few laws.
The United
States, Australia and New Zealand meanwhile had no legal measures at all, the
report said.
At the
other end of the scale, a full 36 percent of countries in Southeast Asia had
laws covering all the recommendations in the Code, followed by Africa at 30
percent and the Eastern Mediterranean region at 29 percent, the report showed.
"Clever
marketing should not be allowed to fudge the truth that there is no equal
substitute for a mother's own milk," UNICEF nutrition chief Werner
Schultink said in the statement.
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