International Baby Food Action Network-IBFAN

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1 IBFAN - INTERNATIONAL BABY FOOD ACTION NETWORK
IBFAN was founded on October 12th, 1979 after the joint meeting of WHO and UNICEF on Infant and Young Child Feeding. It contains 273 groups in 168 countries. IBFAN is an international network. Groups are diverse: consumer organisations, health workers associations and mother support groups. There are also individual members. International Baby food action network consists of many public interest groups.
IBFAN contains 8 district offices.They are in Africa, Arab world, Europe, Oceania, Afrique, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean and North America.
One of the most important focus in IBFAN is Implementation of the international CODE of Marketing of breastmilk substitutes.Also infant feeding safety is important and human rights as the convention on the rights of the child. Other topics are infant feeding in emergency and in the context of HIV, contaminants in babyfood and sponsorship issues.

1.1 IBFAN VISION
The purpose of IBFAN is to enable best for children and mothers by promoting, protecting and support breastfeeding. Support means technical and planning support.

1.2 IBFAN MISSION
IBFAN want to support Governments and civil societys by getting tools and information about supporting breastfeeding. It is important that governments know how to avoid missleading propaganda which baby food corporations do. IBFAN is watch-dog organization. International CODE of breastmilk substitutes has important role because of conflicts of interests in policies and programmes globally and internationally.

1.3 PRINCIPLES
IBFAN has 7 principles:
1. Infant and young children everywhere to have the right to the highest attainable standard for health
2. Families and particular women and children ...

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...CODE directions. We have to be independent of the baby food industry.

3.1 Qualifications for employees in IBFAN
All kind of people like professionals and volunteers can affect to attitude to breastfeeding. Also all kind of health professionals have remarkable role as supporter, as promoter and as protector of breastfeeding. Professionals work must be based on scientific knowledge.

3.2 My career in IBFAN
I have been once in IBFAN Conference in Riga year 2003. It was very useful to get information about marketing and CODE practices in different countries and how they react about advertising and marketing breast-milk substitutes. We should be aware of the power of marketing. As a headnurse and breastfeeding counsellor I try to ensure that my staffs know about the CODE and that they know what is allowed and what is not when they are counselling mothers and families.

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