[text / observer Wang Hui] if Ecuador insists on making resolutions, Washington will impose punitive trade measures and withdraw key military assistance.

This is the US delegation’s threat to Ecuador at a WHO spring conference.

“New York Times” 8 reported that in order to protect the interests of infant formula manufacturers in the country, the United States against Ecuador’s “encourage breastfeeding” resolution, after the threat. In the end, Russia stood up to the pressure of the US side and basically maintained the original resolution.

The resolution, rejected by the US delegation, says, according to decades of research, that breast milk is healthier for children and countries should take measures to limit inaccurate or misleading propaganda about breast milk substitutes.

However, the United States believed that it had affected the interests of infant formula manufacturers, made amendments to the content of the resolution, and asked to delete the statement that the government should “protect, publicize, support breastfeeding” and delete the paragraphs calling for “food publicity that may be harmful to children’s health by the decision-makers.”

After the request was not adopted, the United States began to pose a direct threat, diplomats and government officials at the meeting said.

The US side first pointed to the country of the resolution, Ecuador, the United States said that if Ecuador insisted on a resolution, then Washington would carry out punitive trade measures and withdraw key military assistance.

Such a threat made Ecuador concession quickly.

In this case, health advocates need to quickly find another country to initiate the resolution. But the threat of the United States has left more than a dozen countries behind, and officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States have revealed.

Many of these backward countries are from poorer countries in Africa and Latin America.

WHO conference opens in May

Reported that, in the end, Russia emerged as a new leader of the resolution, and the United States did not threaten it.

An anonymous Russian representative said: “we don’t want to be a hero, but we think it’s wrong for a big country to try to lay a small country, especially on a very important issue in the rest of the world.”

The United States ultimately failed, and the resolution retained most of the initial wording.

However, the United States delegation dragged the conference for two days through procedural operations and deleted the part of the resolution “calling on the WHO to provide technical support to prevent the improper promotion of infant and baby products”.

“It’s shocking and sad,” said Patti Milk Rundall, the policy director of the Baby Milk Action initiative. She has been participating in such meetings of WHO’s decision-making bodies since the late 80s.

“This is simply blackmail. The United States took hostages to try to overturn the consensus on the protection of infant health in the past 40 years,” she said.

The US State Department refused to respond to the matter, calling it a private diplomatic dialogue, the report said. The US Department of health and public service, which led the amendment, explained why the wording of the resolution was questioned, but said it did not threaten Ecuador.

A spokesman for the Ministry of health and public services said in an email that “the first drafted resolutions gave unnecessary barriers to mothers who wanted to provide nutrition for their children.”

“We note that, for various reasons, not all women can breastfeed. These women should have the opportunity to choose and get baby health substitutes and not be blamed for this, “the spokesman said. In order to express herself more freely, she asked for anonymity.

Chapman, the US ambassador to Ecuador (left), deputy secretary of state for political affairs, Thomas Shannon (right), New York Times.

The strong opposition to breastfeeding resolutions by the US delegation is a shock to many public health officials and multinational diplomats, who believe that this is in sharp contrast to the Obama administration’s overall support for the World Health Organization to encourage breastfeeding.

During the confrontation, some US representatives even implied that the United States might reduce its contribution to the WHO. Washington is the largest donor of the health organization. Last year, it provided us $845 million, about 15% of its budget.

This is the latest example of the Trump administration on the side of the corporate interests of many public health and environmental issues. It is reported that the United States has been in the middle of a number of multilateral organizations for a long time.

Kieker Bush (Ilona Kickbusch), director of the global health center at the Geneva Institute for international and development research, says there is a growing concern that the Trump administration may cause persistent harm to the international health institutions such as the World Health Organization, which are fighting the Ebola and other infectious diseases, controlling the death toll of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. All of them play a key role.

“This makes everyone very nervous, because if you can’t reach a consensus on the multilateral issues such as health, what kind of multilateral issues can we agree on?” She said.

A Ecuador official said, “we are shocked. We don’t understand why such a small thing like breastfeeding can cause such a severe reaction.”

The official asked for anonymity because she was worried about losing her job.

This article is an exclusive manuscript of observer network. It can not be reproduced without authorization.