Joyce Namugambe
After Uganda joined the rest of the world to celebrate the world’s breast feeding day, a number of women reveal that many challenges siting financial problems, still stop them from exclusively breast feed their babies.
Women especially single mothers have no choice but to give birth and leave their babies home to go for work as away of providing to their families.
Women, even those in marriage are sometimes forced to carter for the families necessities due to living as married singles, thereby forcing them to leave their babies earlier with baby seaters denaying them achance to breastfeed exclusively, but with no choice.
In this case, women working in markets siting Wandegeya market, are calling on those responsible over the running of the markets to provide space to keep their babies safe so that they can come with them to work and get enough time to breastfeed them.
Women say, they are forced to leave their babies home so that they report back to work due to the fear to lose their jobs for failure to return to work within the expected period of time.
One of the food vendors in Wandegeya market Teddy Namagembe, narates that after giving birth, she only breastfed her baby for 4months and had to take her baby to her mother since she had to return for work, because her demands were high and she is her own provider.
Market manager Zubedah Nantume notes that most of the workers in the market are women. She therefore expresses need to provide a day care space for mothers to be able to come to work with their children, so that they can get enough time to breastfeed them.
Representative from KCCA in the department of nutrition Martha Nakyagaba notes that they have initiatives put in place to enable breastfeeding mothers to continue earning money without denying their children chance to breastfeed their babies for a healthy growth.
