Dear Colleagues,

I want to let you know about a struggle that is going on now in Peru. As you
probably know, Peru is one of the few countries that passed national laws
that were 100% in line with the International Code of Marketing of
Breast-milk Substitutes (the "WHO Code"). (See
http://www.unicef.org/pon97/14-21.pdf for a UNICEF newsletter showing the
level of compliance in all countries...very interesting!)

I am not sure of the status of the law now. In her 1997 Code Handbook, Ellen
Sokol noted that the government was considering revising the law.

Monday I received an email from Nair Carrasco Sanez, a physician and IBCLC
in Peru, who reports that she has been under attack personally and
professionally over the last two weeks, and she believes it is because she
and her colleagues prepared and submitted for approval a new booklet of
national infant feeding guidelines. (I can send the booklet as an attachment
to anyone who asks. It is in Spanish.)

Many Lactnetters have met Nair or know her by reputation. She and her
colleagues have attended several ILCA and/or La Leche conferences, and Nair
is a coordinator of WABA's Mother Support Task Force. She is a strong and
dedicated advocate for women and children. I believe it is important for us
all to know the sort of pressure she is being subjected to and to consider
what we can do as individuals or through our professional or advocacy groups
to give protection to a person who herself is striving to protect
breastfeeding, mothers, and children.

Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
LLL Leader Reserve
working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA)
Co-coordinator, Women & Work Task Force, WABA

Here is Nair's message, which was sent first to a Spanish-language
breastfeeding network as well as to her WABA contacts.

Note: this message was sent on 9/13/04 to lactared, a Latin-American
interest group of professionals involved in helping and supporting
breastfeeding mothers and
babies.*********************************************************************
**********************************

Dear Friends,

Greetings to you all. After a lot of thought, I am writing you to tell you
about the following.

In the last 15 days, I have been the victim of a series of actions against
my most essential right as a Human Being: FREEDOM.

As a result of the campaign that we have begun in order to regulate and
update the norms which protect breastfeeding in our country, I have been a
victim, both individually and institutionally of the following:

1.      I have had electronic communication intervention (when I communicate
with other people it seems that the calls have been recorded or bugged, both
personal and institutional calls)
2.      I have been accosted in a systematic and individual manner as have
some of the others with whom we have begun this campaign of protection for
breastfeeding.
3.      We have been violated in our institutional offices with strangers
entering our work sites who, during non-working hours, have gone through our
administrative information and also our materials and internal work files.
4.      In my home I have been the victim of psychosocial pressure through
my telephone, cable, the lock at the gate of my house, etc.
5.      It has been 15 days since I have been able to walk around with the
freedom to which I was accustomed. I have to have a bodyguard.

I have moral and ethical reserves, and my great faith in God is what has
allowed me to carry on. I am able to rely on friends who have helped me by
listening to me in these difficult moments of which I am a victim. That has
allowed me some time to reflect.

The work in favor of Lactation is for me an act of love, but many mothers in
our country who nurse their babies suffer a series of difficulties.

For many mothers and babies this right is systematically violated by a
culture that wants to impose itself: the bottle and formula culture.

In these days I have met those who want this culture to prevail at any and
all cost. They have made me realize in this time of violence that they are
capable of carrying out their interests of all types: commercial, political
and personal.

This act makes people who have been working in the civil sector as leaders
to be victims OF THESE PERMANENT ATTACKS to debilitate our work and our
mission that the rights of breastfeeding mothers and children be respected
for the good our country.

I call you to be vigilant so that the norms that we have updated, "Peruvian
Guidelines for Feeding" might be approved. This document has been designed
by a technical commission and was turned over on the 8th of July. At this
date, it still hasn't been approved!

I am attaching the document so that you may see it and be vigilant. It seems
that this document is causing a conflict of interest from an unknown source

Only in difficult moments do we know our moral reserve as a nation! As
members (of the Lactared list) and subject to its rights and
responsibilities, I solicit your help, disseminating this message to all
your contacts and interest lists in which you participate.

Thank you for your help.

Nair Carrasco Sanez - IBCLC
Executive Director
CEPREN / Red Peruana de Lactancia Materna
FELLOW Ashoka 1999
CO- Coordinadora  Mother Support Task Force -WABA
www.lactared.com.pe
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