Published by the government of Zimbabwe
2 July 2009
editorial
Harare — THE warning this week by the Government on the increase in illegally-imported baby formulas into the country must be taken seriously.
This is a problem where fingers point directly at unscrupulous importers, mostly crossborder traders who are flooding the market with infant feeding formulas, which do not meet global standards and regulations.
When products meet set health standards, are used well and made available at affordable prices, they can save many lives.
But more often than not, infant formulas that are now finding their way into our retail outlets are overpriced, redundant and could actually be dangerous.
The consequences are too ghastly to contemplate. As many people know, the biggest killer of children in the world today is diarrhoeal disease.
In some countries, the death rate from diarrhoea among babies who are bottle-fed with infant formulas is quite high.
Unethical practices of some multinational companies that produce infant formulas are also to blame because they continue to violate the international baby milk code, which contributes to high child mortality.
The multinationals also promote harmful medications, which cause serious side effects and can prolong infections.
Thousands of pharmaceutical products are peddled in most developing countries and they find their way into the country.
But the World Health Organisation has published a list of "Essential Drugs", largely as a guide for procurement and it is necessary that retailers abide by this list when buying medical products.
This list is important because most people spend much of their savings on food and health but only to discover that many are either totally inappropriate or more highly priced than safer and more effective equivalents.
Part of the problem is the double-standards of multinational companies.
Time and again, toxic and potentially dangerous products that have been banned in developed countries are routinely dumped in poor countries for everyday ailments.
Warnings about their risks and precautions are often incomplete or omitted.
We must guard against our country becoming a dumping ground of redundant and substandard products, which can only further impoverish those in greatest need.
It is now the duty of the authorities concerned to regulate and closely monitor all imports to curb importers from capitalising on the suffering and powerlessness of the majority of people in this country.
However, the growth in illegal crossborder trading makes the monitoring difficult but we must not compromise the inspection of imported products as a precautionary measure.
We cannot fold our hands and allow unscrupulous importers to continue to rake in profits, most of them from the pockets of the poor, from selling dangerous products and drugs.
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