Health chiefs to probe illegal marketing of formula milk

milk
A Filipino mother feeds her child with formula milk. Picture by Hanna Adcock for Save the Children. (Via the Guardian)

The Department of Health is to investigate Nestlé and three other powdered milk companies for illegal marketing of their products.

The move comes a day after the UK’s Guardian newspaper revealed that the companies routinely broke the law in their attempts to persuade poor mothers to choose milk formula over breastfeeding.

ADVERTISEMENT

A joint investigation with Save the Children found that, in a violation of Philippine law, the companies were buying the loyalty of doctors, midwives and health workers by offering them trips to lavish conferences, tickets to shows and even gambling chips.

The Guardian reported that Nestlé, Abbott, Mead Johnson and Wyeth company representatives regularly visited hospitals to hand out “infant nutrition” pamphlets stacked with milk formula marketing material and discount coupons to mothers, many of them poor and uneducated.

Hospital staff were also found to be advising new mothers to buy specific formula brands.

ADVERTISEMENT

Dr Anthony Calibo, chief of the children’s health division of the Department of Health (DOH), told the Guardian that the report’s findings had been forwarded to the Food and Drug Authority.

“It has been a struggle for government to crack down on all of these illicit practices of the milk companies but we thought that things had changed a bit and improved,” said Dr Calibo.

“Your findings pull us all back and make us realise that the problem is still there and the monster is still at large. We really have to find a way to cage that monster.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Despite a 1981 World Health Organisation (WHO) international code banning milk formula companies from targeting mothers and healthcare professionals, the industry has continued to boom over the past two decades.

According to Save the Children, the leading formula companies spend an equivalent of $49.50 on marketing for every baby born worldwide.

At the WHO’s Western pacific meeting last October, WHO director of nutrition for health and development Francesco Branca said that the companies’ aggressive marketing was undermining efforts to increase breastfeeding in the region.

As it stands, the region is very unlikely to meet its 2025 target of increasing the proportion of mothers exclusively breastfeeding their children during the first six months to at least 50 per cent, he added.

Cambodia is the only country in the region currently exceeding that target.

According to the WHO, scaling up breastfeeding globally could save 823,000 lives per year among children aged five and younger.

Comments are closed.