PHA-Exchange> Nestle Nutrition Institute for Africa

[Aviva]

Dear Colleagues,

I would appreciate if you could share this email with everyone. 

In the quote from Nestle's website they use the word "nutrition" to refer to infant formula. They claim that one of their formulas kills bacteria from contaminated water, and in a statement no doubt designed to further "the knowledge and pure joy of eating good food," inform readers that "The formula is now available in southern and eastern Africa."

I do not see that anything in the statement below, apparently signed by those NNI Board members who are not Nestle employees, that addresses these points, beyond referring to them as assumptions and allegations. The statements in my email were quotes from the Nestle website. 

The NNI functionaries ask that future questions be sent directly to an unnamed person associated with the Institute, which no doubt would be preferable to messages like mine that go directly to the public. 
Although I am aware of the desperate financial situation African academics may now find themselves in, it is saddening to see some allowing their good names to be used by Nestle in its current efforts to exploit AIDS hysteria to further its marketing aims in Africa. 

I would point out to anyone else who believes that the Nestle Company is a charity, that its shareholders would rightly not allow management to use its money for purely charitable purposes, even if they wanted to. Its job is to make a profit and breastfeeding obviously cannot contribute. The NNI, on the other hand, is no doubt expected to be a good investment in public relations.

Regards,   Ted Greiner

Here is a quote revealing that Nestle misuses the word nutrition as a synonym for their commercial products: "The long term goal is to improve nutrition in southern and east Africa, in particular nutrition used in the HIV vertical transmission programme through infant
formula," according to Ferdinand Haschke, Nestle's director of nutrition for southern and eastern Africa. Nestle is now openly claiming that one of its brands of infant formula "kills bacteria from contaminated water. The formula is now available in southern and eastern Africa."
(http://www.busrep.co.za/html/busrep/br_frame_decider.php?click_id=343&art_i 
d=ct20010802191035322N2523628&set_id=60) This is an obvious ploy to use unscientic arguments to promote artificial feeding throughout the countries where water is commonly contaminated, efforts which public health experts and the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and relavant World Health Association Resolutions have frustrated for the past two decades."

----Original Message Follows---- 
 
> Names and affiliations of NNI: 
> Prof. Gabriel Anabwani, MBChB, M Med (Paed), M.Sc. (Epid), Senior  Consultant and Head of Paediatrics, Princess Marina Hospital, Gaborone, Botswana. 
> 
> Prof. Ganapati Bhat, M.B.B.S, M.D, DCH, Head Department of Paediatrics & Child Health, University Teaching Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia. 
> 
> Prof. Peter A. Cooper, M.D, FC Paed (SA), PhD, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Witwatersrand & Johannesburg  Hospital, Johannesburg, South Africa. 
> 
> Dr. Chand Domah, M.B.B.S; MD (Paed), Consultant Paediatrician, Flacq  Hospital, Mauritius. 
> 
> Ms. Jane Downs, B.Sc.; Post Grad Dipl Hosp. Diet, B.Sc (Hons) Diet.,  Principal Dietician & Head of Department, King Edward VIII Hospital, Durban, South Africa. 
> 
> Prof. Demetre Labadarios, B.Sc. (Hons); MBChB, Ph.D, FACN, Head, Department Human Nutrition, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. 
> 
> Dr. Joseph Kariuki Mbuthia, MBChB; M. Med, Chairman, Kenya Paediatrics Association, Gertrude's Garden Children's Hospital, Medical Advisory Committee, Nairobi, Kenya. 
> 
> Dr. Precious Moloi, MBChB, DCH, General Practitioner, Women's Clinic,  Sandton Medcare Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa. 
> 
> Prof. Norman Nyazema, B.Sc. B.Sc (Hons), Ph.D, Department of Pharmacology, University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe. 
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