Originally published February 15 2006
Massachusetts health authorities take action to promote breastfeeding among new mothers
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Massachusetts State Department of Public Health has increased restrictions that will prevent corporate promotion of baby formulas in hospital wards, in a statewide effort to promote breastfeeding and its many healthy effects.
An intensified campaign by Massachusetts public-health authorities to encourage breast-feeding comes amid a growing international push for the practice, which offers extensive health benefits to mother and child, specialists said yesterday.
Since the late 1980s, the state Department of Public Health has adopted increasingly stringent rules designed to support breast-feeding, and this week the agency moved to further restrict corporate promotions of infant formula in hospital maternity wards.
While free formula will still be available, the new rules will ban formula makers from routinely putting samples in the gift bags that are a customary memento for new mothers.
The action this week, which puts Massachusetts at the leading edge of formula restrictions in hospitals, extends limits that had been in place for more than a decade.
Medical studies have shown that children who have been breast-fed are less likely to suffer gastrointestinal illnesses, respiratory ailments, and ear infections.
Research has also demonstrated that women who nurse have lower rates of breast and ovarian cancer, said Sally Fogerty, an associate commissioner in the state Department of Public Health.
''The regulations themselves are really looking at the whole family and building an environment around them in the hospital that will support that decision for breast-feeding, and one way of doing that is to eliminate the direct marketing of formula," Fogerty said.
The move to restrict formula promotions also arrives as hospitals and doctors attempt to respond to broader criticism that drug and medical supply companies have insinuated themselves too deeply into the practice of medicine.
Still, Wingle said, hospital administrators want to retain the ability to offer formula to patients who need it -- especially, he said, to poor women who might not be able to afford it.
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