My Account
GET A PUMP WITH INSURANCE
Sign up for the Ameda newsletter
Home WHO Code Compliant

Ameda Is WHO Code Compliant

World Health Organization (WHO) Code

As part of our ongoing mission to be active in the global breastfeeding community, we at Ameda support and comply with the World Health Organization’s goals, including its International Code of Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes, also known as the WHO Code. This is a voluntary standard adopted in the 1980s to stop the marketing of breast milk substitutes and to promote lactation and breastfeeding worldwide, in support of the health of mothers and babies.

The primary purpose of the “WHO-CODE” is to protect mothers and babies from the highly effective, aggressive and predatory marketing of substitutes for breastfeeding (i.e. infant formula, bottles, artificial nipples) at the most vulnerable period of their lives, the birth of a new baby. The Code is in place to "contribute to the provision of safe and adequate nutrition for infants, by the protection and promotion of breast-feeding, and by ensuring the proper use of breast-milk substitutes, when these are necessary, based on adequate information and through appropriate marketing and distribution."

The Code (World Health Organization Publication WHO/MCH/NUT/90.1) says:

  • No advertising of breast-milk substitutes to the public.
  • No free samples to mothers.
  • No promotion of products in health-care facilities
  • No company "mothercraft" nurses to advise mothers.
  • No gifts or personal samples to health workers.
  • No words or pictures idealizing artificial feeding, including pictures of infants on the products.
  • Information to health workers should be scientific and factual.
  • All information on artificial feeding, including the labels, should explain the benefits of breastfeeding, and the costs and hazards associated with artificial feeding.
  • Unsuitable products, such as condensed milk, should not be promoted for babies.
  • All products should be of a high quality and consider the climatic and storage conditions of the country where they are used.

Ameda is one of the few companies that is WHO code compliant in the breastfeeding solutions category. Not all major breastfeeding products manufacturing companies abide this voluntary determination of standard.