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Implementation and Monitoring of the National Code in Mozambique
Mozambique’s National Code of Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes was enacted in October 2007 but there is a lack of awareness among the public and key stakeholders about the content and interpretation of the law.
IBFAN Africa therefore provided technical support and funding for a training-of-trainers of the National Code in conjunction with Mozambique’s Ministry of Health and IBFAN Mozambique Network.
Thirty participants attended the course which aimed to build capacity for implementation and monitoring of the National Code. Participants also undertook practical monitoring exercises and found several violations, mainly on labeling and point-of-sale advertising.
Posted by ibfanafrica on 13 May 2008 | Tagged as: Mozambique
Training in Guinea-Bissau
IBFAN Africa recently funded a capacity-building training for community-group counsellors in Guinea-Bissau.
The training aimed to strengthen counselling skills on IYCF in the context of HIV and the 15 participants were selected from nine of the 21 islands that make up Guinea-Bissau. Participants were community workers including religious leaders.
The training was also used as an opportunity to conduct advocacy and awareness activities including inviting prominent policy/decision makers and community leaders to the opening and closing ceremonies. Radio programmes were also broadcast to raise awareness of issues surrounding IYCF, breastfeeding and HIV and the care of infant and young children.
Posted by ibfanafrica on 13 May 2008 | Tagged as: Guinea Bissau
Annual Mother and Child Nutrition Action Week in Cameroon
Cameroon’s first annual mother and child nutrition action week was launched in January of this year James Achanyi-Fontem of Cameroon Link told IBFAN Africa.
The event, under the patronage of Cameroon’s Minister of Public Health, aims to promote optimal mother and infant feeding and mother and child health and well-being nation-wide.
In addition to counselling on infant feeding, all pregnant women and children between zero and 11 months received free immunisation vaccines and free mosquito nets. Children between 12 and 15 months were also given appropriate medicines to eliminate all types of worms.
Posted by ibfanafrica on 13 May 2008 | Tagged as: Cameroon
News from Botswana
Botswana has had a number of successes in enforcing their national law on marketing of breastmilk substitutes. Hussein Tarimo, Botswana’s expert on the International Code and champion of their strong national law, has said that action has been taken to bring the companies into line with the requirements of the law. Successes include:
- Promotional materials for baby foods are no longer appearing in the streets or in the local newspapers after fines were imposed on distributors.
- One French company has completely fulfilled all the requirements for IF.
- Idealising baby face is gone from all Tiger brand baby foods.
- Visits to health facilities by company reps have been stopped.
- Selling of expired products has been stopped.
- No more products written in foreign languages.
- Companies can no longer use the excuse that there is no national law.
- The removal of the Nestlé idealising flying birds and change to local languages has been agreed upon with the company.
Mr Tarimo also said that, since Nestle South Africa is producing infant formula for the whole region and outsourcing from Brazil, there is an urgent need to network in order to develop a harmonized position for the region. Otherwise, he warned, it is likely that the company will take advantage of trivial differences in national laws and their interpretation to continue with violations.
Posted by ibfanafrica on 13 May 2008 | Tagged as: Botswana, Watch the Code
News from Angola
AMEGA, the Angolan IBFAN group, has come together with the government’s Nutrition Unit in the Ministry of Health to create a Breastfeeding and Counselling Training Centre (CTAAM). This ground-breaking initiative is a triumph for the National Breastfeeding, who have been advocating for the implementation of the National Policy of Infant and Young Child Feeding and Maternal Health initiatives.
The Centre will conduct theoretical and practical sessions on breastfeeding management, complementary feeding, IYCF and HIV and Maternal Health.
The Centre will also play an important role in the revitalising of BFHI and BFCI. However, the National Breastfeeding Committee have had to meet the considerable challenges posed by a recent campaign by Nestlé that undermines on-going efforts on BFHI.
Posted by ibfanafrica on 11 May 2008 | Tagged as: Angola
Anti-AIDS measure backfires in Africa
Anti-breast-feeding measure backfires in Botswana, causing more despair
By Craig Timberg/The Washington Post
NKANGE, Botswana - Doctors noticed two troubling things about the limp, sunken-eyed children who flooded pediatric wards across Botswana during the rainy season in early 2006: They were dying from diarrhea, a malady that is rarely fatal here. And few of their mothers were breast-feeding, a practice once all but universal.
After the outbreak was over and at least 532 children had died — 20 times the usual toll for diarrhea — a team of U.S. investigators solved the terrible riddle.
A decade-long, global push to provide infant formula to mothers with the AIDS virus had backfired in Botswana, leaving children more vulnerable to other, more immediately lethal diseases, the U.S. team found after investigating the outbreak at the request of Botswana´s government.
Benefits of milk outweigh risks
The findings joined a growing body of research suggesting that supplying formula to mothers with HIV — an effort led by global health groups such as UNICEF — has cost at least as many lives as it has saved. The nutrition and antibodies that breast milk provide are so crucial to young children that they outweigh the small risk of transmitting HIV, which researchers calculate at about 1 percent per month of breast-feeding.
“Everyone who has tried formula feeding . . . found that those who formula feed for the first six months really have problems,” Hoosen Coovadia, a University of KwaZulu-Natal pediatrician and author of a recent study on formula feeding, said from Durban , South Africa . “They get diarrhea. They get pneumonia. They get malnutrition. And they die.”
Posted by ibfanafrica on 14 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Botswana, Breastfeeding, HIV
Donation from Wellcome Trust Boosts HIV Research In Sub-Saharan Africa
The Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies, based in an area of South Africa where over one in five people are HIV infected, is to receive approximately 15 million pounds over five years, subject to a three year review, from the Wellcome Trust, the UK’s largest medical research charity. The Centre will use the funding to improve the health status of people in the area, with a particular focus on HIV infection.
Posted by Vulie Kunene on 11 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Breastfeeding, General, HIV, South Africa
Baby Friendly Care in South Africa
Kulani Mavunda
Polokwane
Mokopane Hospital is considered to be the best hospital in Limpopo to have a baby.
The hospital received a platinum certificate last week for the quality of care it offers to newborn babies and their mothers.
Posted by Vulie Kunene on 11 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: BFHI, General, South Africa
Maternal health finally getting some attention
JIANG ALIPO
Daily News; Tuesday,May 08, 2007 @00:03
ONLY relatives, friends and neighbours, those mourning, who usually notice the gap left behind after someone close dies. Also, very little attention is given to a common cause of women death called “the silent killer”. This is when a woman dies due to child birth related causes. Staff Writer JIANG ALIPO writes on. Continue Reading »
Posted by Vulie Kunene on 16 May 2007 | Tagged as: Community Support, General, Maternal Protection, Tanzania
Solely breastfeeding babies cuts HIV toll
The Guardian
Sarah Boseley, health editor
Doctors urge change in UN advice after study finding Mixed feeding is shown to be the worst option.
Doctors urge change in UN advice after study finding Mixed feeding is shown to be the worst option. Doctors today call for UN guidelines to be changed following research showing that exclusive breastfeeding protects the babies of HIV positive women from becoming infected with the virus that causes Aids. More…There has been a heated debate over the best advice to give new mothers with HIV. Guidelines from Unicef, the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS say the best option is to bottle-feed the babies with formula milk, where it is safe and practical to do so, given potential problems such as tainted water supplies. Where exclusive bottle-feeding is not possible, mothers should exclusively breastfeed, they say.
But the most widespread practice in sub-Saharan Africa, where the Aids pandemic is at its worst, is mixed feeding - women supplement breastfeeding with formula milk and solids such as porridge.
Research in the medical journal the Lancet today shows that is the worst of all worlds. Babies of mothers with HIV who receive a mixture of milk and solid foods are 11 times more likely to become infected than those who are exclusively breastfed. Those who are given formula milk as well as breast milk are nearly twice as likely to become HIV positive.
The issue is not just HIV. Half the babies in the study were born to uninfected mothers. Yet Hoosen Coovadia, Nigel Rollins from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa, and colleagues found that roughly twice as many babies who received mixed feeds died than babies who were exclusively breastfed.
An earlier series in the Lancet on child mortality found that the immunity conferred by the mother on her child through breastmilk, as well as the avoidance of tainted water or other foodstuffs, gave the baby considerable protection from disease.
Even in countries with high HIV prevalence, it calculated, exclusive breastfeeding could prevent 13% of deaths in children under five years-old.
The KwaZulu Natal study involved around 2,700 babies born between 2001 and 2005. Major efforts were made to encourage and support women in breastfeeding by sending counsellors to their homes twice a week. The success of the strategy surprised the researchers.
The authors say exclusive breastfeeding “ordinarily protects the integrity of the intestinal mucosa, which thereby presents a more effective barrier to HIV”.
Posted by Vulie Kunene on 16 May 2007 | Tagged as: Breastfeeding, General, HIV, South Africa
