Hi everyone,
Welcome to the monthly news in lactation in Australia.
This month ABA is proud to share the new World Health Organization Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes course. If you are wanting to brush up on your knowledge the course is freely available and easy to work through. The ABA team have done a fabulous job on making this as interactive and interesting as possible. You can find it here: https://aba.asn.au/who-course
Join LEAPP and shape new living guidelines for pregnancy and postnatal care in Australia
The Australian Living Evidence Consortium (ALEC), the Australian College of Midwives (ACM) and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) were recently awarded an Australian Government tender to develop new Living Evidence for Australian Pregnancy and Postnatal care (LEAPP) Guidelines.
ABA is one of 26 members of the growing LEAPP collaboration that will be updating the existing Pregnancy Care Guidelines to reflect current evidence and best practice. We will be contributing to the development of new pregnancy and postnatal care living guidelines that will be continually updated over the next five years.
Why not get involved? The Expressions of Interest (EOI) process is now open, with a call out to clinicians with a range of backgrounds, perspectives and lived experience to join the LEAPP Guideline Leadership Group and Pregnancy and Postnatal Panels.
Full details and an online EOI application form are now available on the ALEC LEAPP EOI webpage, with submissions closing at 5pm on Monday 26 June.
Please feel free to share this LEAPP EOI call out with your colleagues and networks. For any questions or more information, email admin.alec@monash.edu.
As a result of our hard work in raising awareness about the WHO Code here in Australia, ABA was invited to attend the Global Congress on Implementation of the International Code of Marketing of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (Global Congress) at the World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
A plan was made by WHO and UNICEF to hold the Global Congress to help countries figure out how to implement the WHO Code to stop the promotion of breastmilk substitutes (BMS) with the aim to protect breastfeeding.
The key objectives of the Global Congress were:
- Share information and show countries how to stop the marketing of breastmilk substitutes.
- Create a plan for each country to make their regulations and laws stronger, to monitor breaches, and to penalise formula companies who commit breaches.
- Build partnerships with neighbouring countries to share information about the WHO Code and support each other.
To represent ABA, the Global Congress was attended by Executive Officer, Victoria Marshall-Cerins, and myself (Senior Breastfeeding Information and Research Manager, Naomi Hull), joining WHO member country representatives from all over the world.
You can find a bank of key resources about The Code here and more about what ABA is doing here. We have returned from Geneva with a renewed enthusiasm and strength along with ideas and new collaborations.
On Monday 26 June we launched the report that summarises the findings from the Babies and Young Children in Bushfires Study (BiBs) you can find the report here and an article from us in The Conversation which is also our Feature Article this month. Congratulations to the team!
Thank you for all your ongoing support,
Naomi Hull
Senior Manager Breastfeeding Information and Research
