ABSTRACT
Featured in the IGBM study was a statistical analysis of interviews with 800 pregnant women and new mothers and also with 120 health workers in 40 facilities in each country. Many violations of the Code emerge in their accounts. For instance, infant formula companies had been distributing marketing literature promoting formula over breast milk and giving free formula to maternity hospitals and mothers at ratios of one in 12 mothers in Poland and one in four mothers in Thailand. Giving free samples of milk substitutes to new mothers represents a particularly insidious way of promoting formula, because even a few days of infant formula using a teat and bottle makes a baby fussy about taking the breast. The mother's lactation will naturally have become reduced through lack of stimulation and may not be capable of increasing again. In this way the mother is then forced to feed and buy formula when the free supplies cease, at great cost to the baby, its family, and the state in both health and economic terms.
