No harm for Nestle brand

No harm for Nestle
brand baby milk

IN many countries now, the number of people who protest the use of nestle brand baby milk is increasing. Even though there some people who are still believes on that brand.

For those who are protesting it said many baby infant are died because of inappropriate infant feeding.

According to a non profit organization based in Britain, Milk Action it believes that there is no more food locally produced or sustainable than breast milk.

The global network is called IBFAN, network of over 200 citizens groups in more than 100 countries believes a breastfed is less likely to suffer from gastroenteritis, respiratory and ear infections, diabetes, allergies and other illnesses.

They say in areas with unsafe water a bottle-fed child is up to 25 times more likely to die as a result of diarrhoea.

According to their website, reversing the decline in breastfeeding could save 1.5 million lives around the world every year. Breastfeeding helps to fulfill the UN Millennium Development Goals and has the potential to reduce under-5 mortality by 13%.

A further 6% of deaths could be saved through appropriate complementary feeding. Breastfeeding also provides health benefits to the mother, such as reduced risk of some cancers.

“Baby Milk Action is not anti-baby milk. Our work protects all mothers and infants from irresponsible marketing,” it said.

Also according to Anne H. Vincent, head of UNICEF Indonesia’s health and nutrition department, there was a strong correlation between formula consumption and deaths due to diarrhea.

She said the increase in diarrhea cases was caused by unmonitored donations of infant formula to the disaster-stricken area, coupled with poor sanitation and limited access to clean water.

"It´s not that people have negative intentions. What they don´t know is in disasters such as tsunami, cyclones and earthquakes, affected families are already poor and often there’s poor sanitation and so on," she said.

She added that: "There’s no clean water, no sanitation and so forth. Therefore bringing formula in increases and multiplies the rate of diarrhea and the risk of death for young babies."

"Donations of powdered milk in an emergency situation can literally increase the rate of death of young babies, while the people mean to do well."

To make matters worse, she said, the donations encouraged mothers to stop breast-feeding their children and instead feed them infant formula. "We know breast-feeding is very important for children’s health," Anne said.

A UNICEF study conducted in 42 countries showed exclusive breast-feeding, with no additional food or liquid, proved to have the highest impact (13 percent) on saving the lives of infants, compared to all other interventions.

The cases of infant babies dying from brand has also heard last year in China where about 6,000 babies reported last year have been poisoned and three babies have died from drinking baby milk tainted by the industrial chemical.

According to the Nestle website, the company objectives is to manufacture and market their product in such a way as to create value that can be sustained over the long term for shareholders, employees, consumers, and business partners.

Ii say Nestlé does not favor short-term profit at the expense of successful long-term business development and recognizes that its consumers have a sincere and legitimate interest in the behavior, beliefs and actions of the Company behind brands in which they place their trust, and that without its consumers the Company would not exist.

Nestlé is conscious of the fact that the success of a corporation is a reflection of the professionalism, conduct and the responsible attitude of its management and employees, and continues to maintain its commitment to follow and respect all applicable local laws in each of its markets.

But the protest against the use of Nestle brand baby milk are growing even though the company has insist it globally adopts the World Heath Organization code and does not promote infant formula in the developing world.

It seems the pressure of protesting the nestle products is from other competitive companies which are not big like Nestle and are now trying to enter to the market which is dominated by Nestle since 1867.

By Bakari Mnkondo