The Code Handbook

This is an authoritative guide to implementing the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and subsequent, relevant World Health Assembly Resolutions in legislation.

It is used on the week-long training courses on code implementation organised by our partners in the International Code Documentation Centre. Baby Milk Action has used it in training we have delivered for policy makers around the world.

The contents are as follows:

Chapter 1. The International Code: Historical Background

Chapter 2. Marketing in Perspective

Chapter 3. Defining the Scope

Chapter 4. Promotion to the Public

Chapter 5. Promotion to Health Workers and Health Care Facilities

Chapter 6. Information and Education

Chapter 7. Labelling

Chapter 8. Implementing National Measures

Model Law

Appendices

A. Selected National Measures [laws from around the world]

B. The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes

C. Related Resolutions of the World Health Assembly

D. The Innocenti Declaration

E. Roster of National Laws, Regulations and Voluntary Measures

F. Related Reading

---end of contents list

Written by legal expert, Ellen J. Sokol, who has conducted many training courses using the materials, it is fully referenced, legally sound, but also accessible.

Here is a sample:

---extract (page 42/43)

A large number of countries also consider the marketing of follow-up formula (also called follow-on milk) to be particularly harmful to good breastfeediing practices. Follow-up formula is an infant formula that is most often recommended by the manufacturer for babies older than six months, and in some cases, for babies older than four months.

...

It is not far-fetched to state that the majority of companies created follow-up milk as an attempt to get around the restrictions of the International Code and recapture the customers they would lose with the end of commercial promotions of standard infant formula. A study in the Philippines showed that in the two years after the Philippine Milk Code was adopted, company distribution to health facilities of normal infant formula fell by 95%. Yet in that same period, 1986-1988, the proportion of facilities receiving formula for older infants increased by 80%.
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