I'm still in China with my family but thought I would share a conversation I had last week with some Drs. We were staying in Xuzhou, the city my daughter comes from. It's a bit of a backwater, in the week we were there I saw only two non-Chinese, certainly not a tourist place. Anyway, we heard that they have "English corner" every friday night where people practice their English so my husband and son and I went along thinking it would be a good chance to talk to some locals. Well it was interesting, talk about swamped. Each of us were immediately surrounded by people 5 or 6 deep all around and the bold would strike up a conversation. It turned out that I had a group of medical Drs around me, maybe 5 or 6. One of the questions they asked me concerned what I did for a job. When I described my research they had more questions for me. They wanted to know "Do you think that infant formulas are as good as breastfeeding?" "Do you think that science will ever create a formula that is as good? Why not?" "How long should women breastfeed for, is 4 months too long?" You can imagine that I enjoyed these conversations immensely and appreciated their interest in the subject ;-) They laughed when I told them that they must be sure that their babies are breastfed. Let hope that that these Drs will be able to encourage the women that they deal with to breastfeed. I am currently in Xian. Today I spotted a couple of breaches of the WHO code, from our favourite Nestle and a Chinese company (giving freebies with infant formula for <6months). I took photos and got told off for it. They really do do the cradle to grave and infant formaulas are kept on shelves with formulas marketed to Pregnant women (Nestle had a lovely one with a free CD, wonder what that had on it), babies, toddlers, young childre, the middle aged (or mid senile as mistranslated into Chinglish) and the elderly. I also sadly saw a woman begging with a little baby with a filthy bottle beside her :-( Karleen Gribble Usually in Australia but currently in China *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html