Hi all,

Here we are at the end of another month which many have spent in various degrees of lockdown. We hope that you are doing OK despite all that is happening around us.

You may by now have received an email from us announcing the dates for our 2022 series of Health Professional Seminars. Find out more information here. We have an incredible selection of speakers all set to share their knowledge and experiences with you.

In the past month, ABA has attended two conferences – the Australian College of Children and Young People’s Nurses as part of their virtual trade hall. It was great to chat with those of you who were there. Dr Susan Tawia presented ‘Breastfeeding, a powerful tool to promote health equity’ at the Public Health Association of Australia’s national conference.

You may have noticed our ABA Professional website has a whole new look. Unfortunately, this has come with a few bumps as we get it all set up. We sincerely apologise if you have faced any inconvenience because of this. We are aware of a problem with membership payments and believe these are now sorted. We hope this facelift makes it easier for you to find your membership inclusions and all we have to offer especially for health professionals.

Myself and our Queensland Branch President, Kath Angus, attended the launch of Queensland’s LifeBlood Milk Bank. It was an honour to be there and to meet some of the phenomenal milk donors and staff of the milk bank. More information about this can be found here.

Finally, we have been busy on some advocacy projects. We are providing feedback to the Australia/New Zealand College of Anaesthetists on their perioperative fasting guidelines. We will be preparing a submission to provide feedback on the draft of the ‘National Obesity Strategy’ – details of which can be found here. This call for feedback closes on December 15, 2021.

We are very excited to announce that we are kicking off our WHO Code Taskforce which aims to see provisions of the WHO Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes legislated in Australian law. We have welcomed a new ‘Policy and Advocacy Manager – WHO Code’, Ms Cara Galvez to our team this past week. A small select steering group will be formed and chaired by Emeritus Professor Jane Scott from Curtain University. We will keep you updated with the steps in the project and how you can get involved.

I would love to hear from you if you any questions or comments on the above by email naomi.hull@breastfeeding.asn.au

Please take care, see you next month,

Naomi Hull

Senior Manager Breastfeeding Information and Research