World Breastfeeding Conference 2012

Babies Need Mom-Made Not Man-Made

The global Breastfeeding Initiative for Child Survival (gBICS), together with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Women and Child Development, is organizing a 4-day World Breastfeeding Conference – Babies Need Mom-made, Not Man-made, from 6th to 9th December, 2012, at New Delhi.

More than 900 experts from 86 countries, including more than 100 representatives from 50 governments, 30 UN representatives and 150 civil society groups will be coming together to discuss the important public health imperatives of how to increase breastfeeding rates, save mothers from the onslaught of the baby food industry, provide maternity protection for mothers and babies to stay together and evolve a universal service of skilled counselling accessible to all women.

A report “Are Our Babies Falling Through the Gaps? The State of Policies and Programme, Implementation of the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding in 51 Countries”

The report provides an objective score to 10 policy and programme areas based on the WHO’s Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding (WHO 2002).

The conference will also made another report public on “Marketing Offenders” showcasing the large number of inappropriate promotional techniques used by the baby food industry to mislead people to use their products. That’s the crux of the conference tagline, “Babies Need Mom-made not Man-made.”

The Conference will position breastfeeding and infant and young child feeding interventions as a key to accelerate progress on the Millennium Development Goals of reducing malnutrition and infant and child mortality.

According to WHO and UNICEF, following optimal feeding practices could save 1.5 million infants every year, because under-nutrition contributes to more than one-third of these deaths. Under-nutrition, particularly in children below two years of age, prevents them from reaching their full development potential as the brain develops almost 90% by that time. Breastfeeding has also been identified as a key intervention providing long-term health protection against childhood and adult obesity and lowered risk of diabetes, hypertension and cardiac diseases.

The Conference will bring together Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices’ success stories from Brazil, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Lalitpur (UP) and many more countries.