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JustAct Action: Marketing that Kills – the selling of breastmilk substitutes throughout the world

Action

Refuse to support companies whose marketing practices endanger the lives of mothers and babies world wide, breaking the World Health Organisation’s international code of practice!

How

Gather evidence and boycott! And let the companies know you are refusing their products and why.

THE ISSUE

• This action is about choice, freedom of information and the lives of babies across the world.
• It is about multi-national companies using false and manipulative information and restricting choice of parents through their marketing of breast milk substitutes, endangering the health and lives of babies and mothers world over.

In the Philippines

In the Philippines alone, 16,000 babies die each year because of inappropriate feeding. Often they are fed breastmilk substitutes (that is any food, including formula, which is given to babies in replacement of breastmilk) from a very early age. Only 1.4 percent of 6month olds are exclusively fed breast milk throughout the Philippines. The World Health Organisation and UNICEF have found that the fierce marketing of baby milk formula throughout the country, and indeed the world, misleads parents into believing infant formula is equivalent or superior for their child. This sophisticated marketing of breastmilk substitutes creates millions of dollars profits for multinationals at the expense of the health of babies, which contributes to low breastfeeding rates and higher rates of death among babies.

Unfortunately this is not an isolated occurrence!

The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre estimates that 2 million infants die around the world every year because they are not adequately breastfed. Where water is unsafe a bottle-fed child is up to 25 times more likely to die as a result of diarrhoea than a breastfed child.

TAKE ACTION

Visit JustAct for more information and which companies we are targeting!