PESHAWAR, July 24: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is yet to enact its own exclusive law to promote breastfeeding and apply brakes on avoidable childhood deaths, according to paediatricians and officials.

“We need a mechanism to monitor the child nutrition through putting in place strict law to check illegal sale of formula milk. Sindh and Punjab provinces have adopted their own provincial laws after passage of 18th Amendment. They are able to check the aggressive promotional marketing tactics by multinational factories,” officials told Dawn.

They said that after 18th Amendment the provinces were required to enact their own laws as the Federal Breastfeeding Ordinance 2002 was redundant. Officials said the province needed to enact a law on pattern of Sindh where manufacturers were made bound to allot certain space on packages to the warnings in Sindhi and Urdu languages saying “formula milk is no substitute to breast milk.”

The paediatricians said that children should be given breast milk for six months to develop their immunity against diseases and ensure their physical growth. In Pakistan, more than 58,000 children died in the first 24 hours of their lives, they said.

According to them, breastfeeding is the cheapest way to put brakes on ailments that haunt children the most. “We need to scale up people’s awareness about the significance of child health,” they said.

The health department officials said that they had already drafted a law, which needed to be re-sent to the provincial assembly.

Under the proposed The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Safety and Standards Act, 2012 food authority would be set up to ensure availability of safe food, officials said.

A draft law was sent to the previous provincial assembly but it was not discussed and adopted into a law. It had been vetted by the law department and would be sent to the new assembly directly, officials said.

The manufacturers of formula milk and all those selling and marketing food items would be checked to ensure availability of safe edible items to consumers in the province, officials said. A food authority will be also established in the province.

The officials said that new set of increased penalties was proposed in new law to send makers, marketers and sellers of contaminated food items to jail. They said that penalties under the Food Act 1960 for various offences were lenient and failed to check effectively adulteration of food, causing harm to the people’s health.

The paediatricians, however, said that the proposed law failed to cover all child health issues as it contained only two clauses. The government clubbed together about six federal laws to make a food Act that would take care of all aspects of food, they said.

“We need separate legislation for breastfeeding and child health promotion to stem tide of deaths due to use of formula milk by gullible mothers, who are deceived through advertisements,” they said. In Pakistan, 37 per cent mothers breastfed their infants, they added.

“It has scientifically been proven that children should be given breast milk immediately after they are born,” a senior paediatrician said.

The proposed Act didn’t cover the child health nutrition, he said.

The other two provinces had adopted the federal law but passed the same from the assemblies on the basis of which they could initiate cases against the violators of the Act, the paediatrician said.