Dhaka: Baby milks, produced by local and foreign companies, pose serious threats to child health, observed researchers at a programme in Dhaka on Thursday.

Speakers at the programme said baby milk producing companies misled parents by advertisements and did not let them know that the formulas and baby foods are harmful to the child’s growth—both mental and physical.

Addressing the launch of a report, titled ‘Role of stakeholders in promoting breastfeeding in the light of the Breast Milk Substitutes Law 2013 in rural areas of Bangladesh,’ speakers said the perfect time for intervention for the baby milk companies are just after the delivery when mothers’ breasts take some time to produce milk for the new-borns and when the mothers start coming back to office after maternity leave.

These companies usually lure physicians with attractive packages of privileges to prescribe their brands for the newborns, they added.

Speakers said milk companies spend huge amount of money on advertisements in all platforms—including the mass media, cajole the media house owners and the journalists into making attractive news on their unhealthy products and advertise their brands under social welfare activities like establishing breastfeeding corners.

As a result, despite these companies are violating the ‘Breast Milk Substitutes (BMS) Law 2013’ in different forms, it is increasingly becoming difficult to bring them to book.

Rather the consumers, even the mothers and the families, lured by the dazzling advertisements and powerful marketing system, are buying the formulas and commercially produced baby foods, said the speakers at the programme at the BRAC Centre in Dhaka.

BRAC Advocacy for Social Change organised the event to introduce the research report, carried out by BRAC Research and Evaluation Division.

The research was published in April 2014.

BRAC Health, Nutrition Population Programme director Kaosar Afsana gave the welcome speech at the event.

Fahmida Akter, staff researcher, BRAC RED presented the keynote paper.

Professor Abdul Hannan, additional director general, Directorate General of Health and Services, attended as the chief guest, while Tapan Kumar Biswas, deputy director, Institute of Public Health and Nutrition was the special guest. The programme was presided over by Ahmed Mustaque Raza Chowdhury, vice‑chairperson, BRAC, the programme was addressed among others, by former IPHN director Shah Nawaz, Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation chairperson SK Roy, CSA For Sun Bangladesh chairperson Rukhsana Haider, BRAC Advocacy for Social Change programme coordinator Sadrul Hasan Mazumder and Bangladesh Health Reporters’ Forum president Toufiq Maruf.