Calls to regulate Horlicks advertisements in Bangladesh maligning breastfeeding campaign

Speakers at a roundtable have asked the government to regulate advertisements of Horlicks as they feel that aggressive marketing of baby food companies is maligning breastfeeding campaign.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 18 August 2016, 07:04 PM
Updated : 18 August 2016, 07:48 PM

The Director of the government’s Institute of Public Health Nutrition, IPHN, Dr ABM Muzharul Islam said Horlicks was causing “damage” to children.

But he said he cannot regulate them.

“In the advertisement they are showing that if pregnant women take Horlicks, then the unborn child in the womb grows rapidly.”

“One day I called them to my office. Then they argued that ‘you are working with children. Our advertisement is targeted towards mother’,” he revealed.

The IPHN can regulate the advertisements targeting children aged below two years. A new breast milk substitute, BMS, code has been passed, but implementation rules are yet to made.

The US development agency, USAID, organised the roundtable with Bangla daily Kaler Kantho marking World Breastfeeding Week observed from Aug 1 to Aug 7.

Nutritionists, government officials, businessmen and journalists were present at the roundtable.

State Minister for Health Zahid Maleque and Additional Director General for Health Services Prof Abul Kalam Azad also spoke, among others.

A director of the apex business body, FBCCI, M Helal Uddin, said there must be a committee in place to give clearance to any food-related advertisements.

Chairperson of Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation Dr SK Roy said they had met the information minister twice for stopping Horlicks advertisements aired in Indian television channels.

“Our people see those channels,” he said, adding that it is difficult to promote breastfeeding countering those attractive advertisements of multinational companies.

In 2008, an advertisement of Horlicks, banned in Britain on false nutritional claims, was carried by Bangladesh’s TV stations and newspapers.

Britain's advertisement watchdog found the maker GlaxoSmithKline's claim that Horlicks makes babies "taller, stronger and sharper" false and banned the commercial.

The company said they had made that for Bangladesh but mistakenly aired it in the UK.

The government, however, did not take any regulatory steps against the company.

Dr Roy also spoke against the formula milk and said the UN in a resolution had stated that “there is no technology in the world that can make germ-free powder milk”.

He said the resolution also suggested writing that message in the container. “But they don’t follow it in Bangladesh,” he added, urging strict regulations.

The rate of exclusive breastfeeding, which means nothing except breast milk until six months of age, is 55 percent in Bangladesh, according to the 2014 Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS).

The government on the World Breastfeeding Week said results of a new survey, which would be disseminated soon, indicate an increase of the rate.

Breastfeeding is traditionally known to benefit children, but the authoritative British medical journal, the Lancet, in its first comprehensive analysis on breastfeeding in January said it has both social and economic impacts.

The journal also suggests countries to make it a separate ‘indicator’ in pursuing the UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals.

The Unicef and WHO chiefs recently called upon the government to make it “policy priorities”.

The Lancet finds that globally, the costs of lower cognitive ability associated with not breastfeeding amount to more than $300 billion each year, a figure comparable with the entire global pharmaceutical market.

About 820,000 child deaths could be prevented annually, which is about 13 percent of all under-5 child deaths, by improving breastfeeding rates, in addition to the lives already saved by current breastfeeding practices.

Speakers at the roundtable, however, said that it is the responsibility of all to ensure an environment in which mothers can breastfed their kids stress-free.