51st World Health Assembly

Gro Harlem Bruntland inaugurated
There was much to celebrate at the 51st World Health Assembly in Geneva, May 1998. First there was the celebration of its 50th anniversary, attended by world celebrities such as Fidel Castro and Hilary Clinton and secondly the inauguration of the new Director General, Dr. Gro Harlem Bruntland.

Dr. Bruntland, the former Prime Minister of Norway and the author of the well-known Bruntland report on the environment, is a strong advocate for breastfeeding, having breastfed her four children.

In her inaugural speech she stressed the importance of governments providing universal coverage of health care and that a privatized system risks not only decreased accessibility but also massive increases in costs.

IBFAN lobby
At the Assembly, IBFAN’s 14 representatives from the five regional offices around the world provided evidence of the massive and systematic way in which the infant formula companies continue to flaunt and disregard the International Code.

For the first time since the adoption of the International Code in 1981, there were no new resolutions on infant and young child nutrition tabled at the World Health Assembly. Concerns about transmission of HIV in addition to a heavy lobby by the infant feeding products industry, mainly Nestlé as well as the US ambassador to Switzerland kept resolutions off the table. Before and during the Assembly, these industry interests lobbied countries to not put resolutions before the Assembly. In exchange the WHO Secretariat promised the possibility of an apology from the International Association of Infant Food Manufactures (IFM). The IFM, in its statement to the WHA, made a guarded acknowledgment that “there are instances where companies may not be in full compliance with the code at national level.” As well the IFM promised “Where there are violations, our companies are committed to speedily correcting them.”

The debate, however, was able to focus on a number of important issues in infant feeding. IBFAN and Save the Children and several country delegates -- the Netherlands, Zimbabwe and others -- stressed the need for continued vigilance in light of the massive evidence of non-compliance to the International Code. IBFAN also stressed the need for independent research in infant feeding, especially continued research in the health, socio-economic and environmental value of breastfeeding. In relationship to HIV and breastfeeding IBFAN urged the WHO to continue its efforts to ensure that all infants and young children have access to breastmilk and that all mothers are enabled to breastfeed and that for those babies that need to be artificially fed, policies be in place to safeguard the protection of breastfeeding for the majority.