New World Health Assembly Resolution - WHA 61.48

It was the World Health Assembly last week and a working group presented text on Infant and Young Child Nutrition for adoption.

The Assembly:

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URGES Member States:

(1) to strengthen implementation of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk
Substitutes and subsequent relevant Health Assembly resolutions by scaling up efforts to
monitor and enforce national measures in order to protect breastfeeding while keeping in mind
the Health Assembly resolutions to avoid conflicts of interest;

(2) to continue action on the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding and the
Innocenti Declaration of 2005 on infant and young child feeding and to increase support for
early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, in order to reduce the scourge of malnutrition and its associated high rates of under-five morbidity and mortality;

(3) to implement, through application and wide dissemination, the WHO/FAO guidelines on
safe preparation, storage and handling of powdered infant formula in order to minimize the risk of bacterial infection and, in particular, ensure that the labelling of powdered formula conforms with the standards, guidelines and recommendations of the Codex Alimentarius Commission and taking into account resolution WHA58.32;

(4) to investigate, as a risk-reduction strategy, the possible use and, in accordance with
national regulations, the safe use of donor milk through human milk banks for vulnerable
infants, in particular premature, low-birth-weight and immunocompromised infants, and to
promote appropriate hygienic measures for storage, conservation, and use of human milk;

(5) to take action through food-safety measures, including appropriate regulatory measures,
to reduce the risk of intrinsic contamination of powdered infant formula by Enterobacter
sakazakii and other pathogenic microorganisms during the manufacturing process as well as the risk of contamination during storage, preparation and handling, and monitor the effectiveness of these measures;

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The UK supported the Resolution, which is hopefully is a good sign as we look to the authorities to take action on the marketing practices exposed in the monitoring report I wrote about yesterday. See:
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2008/06/bflg-may-2008.html

The full text is available at:
http://www.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/A61/A61_48-en.pdf

This is marked as draft, but I believe it is as adopted. It will be available in due course on the WHO site in various languages.