SIFC asks Sindh govt to consider making changes to breastfeeding law

The federal government’s Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) has asked the Sindh government to consider amending its landmark breastfeeding law to accommodate demands from the Baby Food and Nutrition Council (BFNC). 

In a formal letter sent by the SIFC to the Sindh health secretary, the Sindh government has been asked to consider making changes to the Sindh Protection and Promotion of Breast-Feeding and Young Child Nutrition Act, 2023, including narrowing the age limit of regulated products from 36 months to 12 months, excluding complementary food from its scope, and allowing retail sale of infant formula outside pharmacies.

However, health professionals seem to disagree with the proposed changes. “These changes will effectively gut the law,” warned a senior official at the Sindh health department who requested anonymity.

The Sindh breastfeeding law, enacted in 2023, is widely regarded as a progressive step to protect infant health by encouraging exclusive breastfeeding for six months and continued breastfeeding up to 36 months with nutritious complementary feeding.

It also seeks to regulate and restrict unethical promotion of formula milk products, which health professionals argue are often aggressively marketed to new mothers despite well-documented risks.

Earlier, such infant formula came under the regulatory framework of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap), but now they have been classified as ‘food’ instead of ‘pharmaceutical product’, placing them under the oversight of provincial food authorities.

Experts say the current push to weaken Sindh’s legislation is part of a broader strategy to neutralise regulation altogether. “Except for a few hundred very sick infants, no child in Pakistan needs formula milk,” said Prof Jamal Raza, senior paediatrician and executive director of the Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN) who helped draft the law.

“It’s a profit-driven industry exploiting families, and it’s draining our foreign reserves,” he remarked.

Pakistan imports formula milk worth millions of dollars every year. Unicef estimates that only 48 per cent of the infants in Pakistan are exclusively breastfed in the first six months, which is far below the global health targets.

This poor breastfeeding rate contributes significantly to Pakistan’s high infant mortality rate, which stands at 54 per 1,000 live births. Breastfeeding is proven to reduce the risk of diarrhoea, pneumonia, and malnutrition—leading causes of infant deaths in the country.

Sindh is the only province to have passed a breastfeeding protection law, and efforts to enact similar legislation at the federal level have failed. A bill introduced in the National Assembly by a paediatrician-turned-senator has been stalled for years.

“Instead of replicating this law across the country, we are now watching attempts to dismantle it,” said a public health researcher in Karachi. “It’s not just shortsighted, it’s dangerous.”

National and international child health advocates, including the Pakistan Paediatric Association (PPA), Unicef and Nutrition International, have warned that any dilution of the Sindh law would weaken Pakistan’s commitment to the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.