Joy Wanja

8 September 2010

Nairobi — Kenya women are calling on their employers to facilitate a conducive environment at the workplace to nurse their children.

This is the call by women to their employers in a national campaign aimed at encouraging nursing employees maintain optimal breastfeeding practices after resuming work. Even in the wake of a national campaign to encourage breastfeeding, some women are forced to contend with unhygienic conditions at work to express and store the milk after the maternity leave is over.

Public Health minister Beth Mugo expressed concern that some working mothers are expressing milk to breastfeed their children in restrooms for lack of an appropriate environment. "The mothers lack a hygienic environment to express their milk with the majority doing so in the toilets," Mrs Mugo said in a statement read on her behalf by Bruce Madete.

Others develop lowered immunity because they are introduced to other foods than breast milk before they are six months old, Mrs Mugo added. Mrs Mugo dared employers to set up Crèche's at the work place to allow women to breastfeed their babies adequately.

A Crèche is a day care centre, or a group of adults who take care of children in place of their parents, while their mothers are at work. This will allow mothers the ability to relieve their breasts and reduce the risk of breast infection that may also lead to discontinued breastfeeding by working mothers, she pointed out.

Dubbed, 'Better Business practices for children,' the Kenya Private Sector Alliance challenged employers to have flexible hours that would allow mothers to breastfeed their newborns either at work or at home.

The World Health Organisation together with Unicef recommends that for a baby to grow healthy and strong, it should be fed exclusively on breast milk for six months. This nourishes the baby and offers protection against diarrhoea and respiratory infections. Some of the requests are for employers to comply with the 14-weeks maternity provision as stipulated under the Kenyan Employment Act.

"Review of workplace policies regarding flex time, including short breaks to express milk, to support women who are exclusively breastfeeding for the first six months after delivery," reads one of the components of the campaign.

Employers were also urged to set aside a designated clean, private area for mothers to express milk or breastfeed their babies. Kepsa also calls for the provision of appropriate furniture and access to water and soap in the designated room to clean the storage items.

A two-hour break per day for the mother to breastfeed was also one of the suggestions put forward to encourage the healthy practice. Mrs Mugo challenged employers to adopt the practices above, a move that would see absenteeism and low productivity by nursing mothers reduce.

"This also translates to lower health costs, employee satisfaction and morale, and a better image for the company," the minister said. Over one-third of child deaths are due to under-nutrition mostly from increased severity of disease and those who survive have a high risk of cognitive development.

Mrs Mugo lauded the initiative adding it would scale up interventions towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal number one aimed at halving child mortality deaths in the next five years. She expressed concern that 68 per cent of Kenyan infants are exposed daily to an increased risk of disease.

Also present at the function was Unicef Kenya representative Ms Olivia Yambi and Ms Terry Wefwafwa, head Division of Nutrition at the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation.