The Ministry of Health (MOH), represented by the Nutrition Department in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean organized today (Monday) at Park Inn Hotel training workshop on the Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (NetCode).

The training workshop held under the patronage of H.E. Dr. Ali bin Talib Al-Hina'i, MOH Undersecretary for Planning Affairs in the presence of H.E. Dr. Akjemal Magtymova, WHO representative to the Sultanate.

The three-day workshop gathers participants from the Eastern Mediterranean Region including the Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, Pakistan and Tunis. 

The workshop aims at overviewing the regional situation of code implementation, countries experiences on the net code pilot, establishing national monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, as well as developing national action plans by all countries for net code monitoring.Dr. Akjemal pointed out in her statement that, the World Health Assembly (WHA) has adopted in May the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes to protect breastfeeding from aggressive and unethical marketing practices.The WHO representative urged the Member States to implement in its entirety the Code and subsequent relevant to the WHA resolutions by developing, enacting and enforcing a national law, regulations or other appropriate measures covering all provisions in the Code, and scaling up efforts to monitor and enforce its implementation. Dr. Akjemal also added that the main objectives for this regional training workshop are to train and build capacity of Member States on the Monitoring framework, protocols of the International Code and relevant WHA resolutions, in addition to formulation, monitoring and evaluation of national Code legislation. The training workshop addresses the current situation of inappropriate marketing, emerging practices and challenges in this regard and promoting health care systems…etc.