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January 29, 2016

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German changes public’s notion on breast milk

By Maggie Zhang | January 29, 2016, Friday | Print Edition

Detlef Britzke finds it easy to be passionate about his job. As China’s managing director of Medela, a company that offers products that help mothers story breast milk, he’s not only in charge of expanding the business, but of changing public misconceptions of breast milk and enhancing the health of newborns.

“I am passionate about my job because we are serving customers who are overwhelmed by the happiness of starting a new life with their newborn,” the health-care veteran said. “It’s a happy environment.”

Britzke is an active breast milk advocate, and said that there’s a lot of work to be done in China. According to Medela, breastfeeding rates were at an all-time low in 2007 when the company started its business.

At the beginning, even health-care professional believed that infant formula is superior to breast milk. But science has long proven that breast milk provides the best nutrition an newborn could get. Breast milk contains antibodies that naturally protect the newborn against disease, a mix that can’t be reproduced in a lab.

To change the prevailing doubts in breastmilk, Britzke and his colleagues started to organize symposia and invited medical experts and researchers to share their experience and knowledge about the benefits of breastmilk with medical professionals in China working in maternity wards and in Neonatal Intensive Care Units.

Britzke can talk about the benefits of breastfeeding for hours — from the benefits to babies as the best source of nutrition and its guard against long-term negative health problems like obesity and diabetes to the benefits to new mums who will get back to shape more easily and rapidly. They also turn to social media like WeChat and Weibo to reach out to more Chinese consumers.

The hard work is paying off. Now, China is Medela’s third-largest market in the world after the United States and Germany. Britzke believes China has the potential to overtake Germany and become Medela’s second-largest market this year.

“China has about 16 million new babies annually and the statistics in the US is around 4 million,” he said. “If China’s breastfeeding penetration is up to the US level, it’s natural to see China being five times the US market and eventually becoming our largest market.”

He hopes that China could rise to that position within a decade — an ambition that’s not just financial for him.

“It’s not all about money,” he said. “At Medela, we feel the responsibility, joy and drive to contribute to build a better society with a higher purpose as we are helping new mums pursue the right path.”

The World Health Organization, UNICEF and health authorities in China are all advocating breastfeeding babies exclusively for the first six months and actually continue feeding breast milk to the baby for up to two years.

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