Multinational baby formula manufacturers, including US-based Mead Johnson & Company and Abbott Laboratories, have been relentlessly pushing their products on mothers and poorly paid doctors in Vietnam, while rampantly violating Vietnamese laws meant to promote breastfeeding -
International guidelines and Vietnamese law recognize breast milk as superior to formula for an infant's health. Yet dozens of interviews with mothers, doctors, health officials and shopkeepers suggest that formula companies pay doctors to peddle their products, promote it for infants under age one and approach mothers and health care workers at health facilities - all of which are against the law.
desmoinesdem and others here certainly know more on this topic than I do, but it's well accepted by everybody that breastfeeding is nutritionally superior to manufactured formula. While the Vietnamese government struggles to promote breastfeeding with a tiny budget and a staff of just two people (the current goal is to reach a 50% exclusive breastfeeding rate by 2015), these companies are targeting everything that moves with millions and millions of dollars in advertising (formula manufacturers are amongst Vietnam's Top Five advertisers) and powerful teams of high priced lawyers who love nothing more than to sue those who'd dare put people over corporate profits. Formula manufacturers sued the Philippines two years ago for attempting to toughen advertising laws.
The article goes on to mention that workers at a women's health clinic claim a Dutch formula company provided them a small commission for every can of formula sold. Several other companies also apparently tried to land deals with that clinic. Formula sales inside hospitals are illegal, so to get around that the alleyways surrounding Hanoi's maternity hospital are packed with shops selling formula. Company representatives have been accused of attempting to steal patient information from hospitals, of plastering nursery schools with advertisements and corporate logos on playground equipment, and of hosting regular and extremely misleading "child nutrition seminars" in fancy hotels.
This is the kind of stuff they're selling -
But Nguyen Thi Minh, 29, a Hanoi paralegal, said she was approached by a Mead Johnson salesman at a Hanoi maternity clinic shortly before giving birth.
"I chose Mead Johnson's EnfaGrow because the advertisements said it boosts your child's IQ and makes them taller," Minh said. |
