As we reach the end of the decade, child malnutrition, obesity and stunting are at higher levels than they were in 2015. As we commemorate World Food Day, hunger and food insecurity have increased among households.
The impact of formula feeding on children casts a long shadow over the duration of their lives as they pay now with rising rates of malnutrition — obesity and stunting — but also in future due to their predisposition to non-communicable diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Yet the formula industry takes no responsibility for this public health nutrition crisis nor do they see their marketing of their products as aggressive displacement of breastfeeding.
But after more than a decade of discontinuation of free formula distribution as part of the prevention of mother-to-child-transmission of HIV programme, and a decade of the Regulations of Foodstuff for Infants and Young Child Feeding — the R991 — to regulate the inappropriate marketing of foods that displace breastmilk, how is it that formula feeding is the norm in a country that supports breastfeeding as the optimal choice for child health and...
We are in this situation due to a lack of conscious and ethical leadership in academia, and political will by the South African government to tackle the hold that the infant formula industry has on the public health nutrition agenda in South Africa. In 1987 already, an academic article focused on theindicated that “the infant formula industry and the academic community have developed and maintained significant educational and research interactions over the past four decades”.