By Ben Musanje
The Ministry of Health has pledged to push for the enforcement of a new legal requirement compelling employers to provide time, space or facilities for breastfeeding and childcare at workplaces, as Uganda moves to strengthen support for working mothers and protect breastfeeding gains.
The commitment comes under Section 56A of the Employment Act, as amended in 2026, which requires every employer to make available at the workplace time, space or a facility for breastfeeding and childcare for employees’ children aged between three and 36 months.
The law further requires the Minister responsible for labour to prescribe operational standards for the breastfeeding and childcare facilities, providing a framework for how the new requirement will be implemented.
The Ministry of Health says it will work with other stakeholders to ensure the provision does not remain on paper, warning that failure to implement the law would continue to expose working mothers to challenges that can undermine breastfeeding.
Laura Ahumuza Turinawe, a Senior Nutritionist at the Ministry of Health, said the new legal provision presents an important opportunity to make workplaces more supportive of breastfeeding mothers.
She was speaking at a media breakfast meeting held at the Lourdel Upper Boardroom in Kampala on Tuesday, August 11, 2026, ahead of Uganda’s commemoration of World Breastfeeding Week and the official launch of the National Nutrient Profile Model.
Turinawe said the Ministry of Health, working with the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, had already been pushing for workplace measures to support breastfeeding.
“We have regulations in place, which the Ministry of Health worked on with the Ministry of Gender, that mandate workplaces or institutions, employers, to establish breastfeeding and child care facilities,” she said.
She said the provisions have now received additional backing through the amended Employment Act.
“If this is well implemented, and we need you to talk about it, really, because we know, much as the judgment is there, implementation, if it’s not done well, it will not help the mothers,” Turinawe told journalists.
She said the Ministry would develop guidelines to help institutions and workplaces understand how to establish and operate breastfeeding and childcare facilities.
Under the amended law, the facilities are intended for children aged from three months to 36 months.
The Ministry’s renewed emphasis on workplace support comes as Uganda seeks to sustain what officials describe as strong breastfeeding performance while addressing persistent gaps.
Turinawe said Uganda was performing relatively well on breastfeeding indicators, citing Uganda Demographic and Health Survey figures showing that more than eight in ten babies are initiated on breastfeeding, while 87 per cent are exclusively breastfed.
However, she said the remaining gap still represents a significant number of children who may not benefit fully from recommended infant-feeding practices.
“We want to brag a bit. As a country, I think we are doing very well,” she said, while stressing that the focus must now be on sustaining the gains and reaching mothers and babies who are still being left behind.
According to Turinawe, Uganda’s infant and young child feeding recommendations centre on three key practices: early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and appropriate complementary feeding beginning at six completed months.
Early initiation means putting a newborn to the breast within the first hour after delivery, while exclusive breastfeeding requires that the baby receives only breast milk for the first six months, without other foods or liquids.
After six months, mothers and caregivers are encouraged to introduce safe, diverse and nutritionally balanced complementary foods while breastfeeding continues.
Turinawe said these practices are critical to ensuring that children not only survive infancy but also grow and develop to their full potential.
She said optimal infant feeding could avert more than 800,000 child deaths globally, underscoring the importance of creating conditions that allow mothers to breastfeed successfully.
“Many of them these days are born very small. They are born very sick,” she said, pointing to the vulnerability of some Ugandan newborns.
She said the objective should be to ensure that such children survive, grow and eventually become productive members of society.
But health officials say mothers cannot be expected to sustain breastfeeding through individual effort alone.
The workplace, according to the Ministry, has become one of the most important areas requiring intervention as increasing numbers of women participate in both formal and informal employment.
Turinawe said working mothers frequently face difficulties when they return to work while their children are still young.
For mothers without appropriate facilities, maintaining breastfeeding can become particularly difficult, especially when there is nowhere to breastfeed or express breast milk safely and privately.
This, officials say, is why Section 56A could become a significant instrument in strengthening Uganda’s breastfeeding environment.
The provision states that every employer must make available at the workplace “time, space or a facility” for breastfeeding and childcare for employees’ children, with the requirement applying to children between three and 36 months.
However, the law leaves the detailed operational standards to regulations to be prescribed by the Minister.
The Ministry of Health therefore says the next step will be translating the legal requirement into practical guidance that employers can follow.
Turinawe urged the media to create awareness about the provision so that both employers and employees understand their rights and obligations.
She said the law would have little impact if mothers were unaware of it or employers failed to implement it.
“Start talking about it, create awareness on it, because it’s now a law that is also backed up by regulations, and we are going to do guidelines for the institutions, workplaces, on how to set up breastfeeding and child care facilities,” she said.
The workplace provision comes against a backdrop of other pressures affecting breastfeeding in Uganda.
Turinawe identified aggressive marketing of breast milk substitutes as one of the major challenges, saying manufacturers were increasingly using digital platforms, including social media, to reach mothers.
She said the growth of platforms such as TikTok and Instagram had created new avenues through which companies and agents could market infant formula and related products.
Uganda has had regulations governing the marketing of infant and young child foods since 1997, and Turinawe said the Government would continue enforcing them.
She warned that violations could attract penalties under the existing regulatory framework.
The Ministry is also scaling up the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, which promotes breastfeeding-supportive practices within health facilities.
According to Turinawe, the initiative is also being extended into communities through mother care groups, where mothers are encouraged to support fellow mothers in adopting appropriate infant and young child feeding practices.
Health workers are another important part of the strategy.
Turinawe said the Ministry had observed better outcomes in areas where health workers received targeted training and mothers received individual or group support.
She said the Government would continue investing in capacity building to ensure health workers are adequately equipped to provide breastfeeding counselling and support.
The Ministry is also planning to strengthen other interventions, including breastfeeding campaigns and social and behaviour change communication.
Turinawe said Uganda must view breastfeeding as a responsibility shared by families, communities, employers, health workers, policymakers and the wider public rather than an issue affecting mothers alone.
Her remarks were echoed by Dr Daniel Kyabayinze, Director of Public Health at the Ministry of Health, who said workplace and structural barriers remained among the obstacles preventing some mothers from maintaining breastfeeding.
Kyabayinze said breastfeeding should be treated as a broader public policy issue because mothers require support from employers, families and communities.
“Breastfeeding is not solely a mother’s duty,” he said, adding that men and other family members should also be part of efforts to create an enabling environment for breastfeeding.
He said the media had a critical role to play in ensuring that the public understands the importance of breastfeeding and the policies designed to support it.
The Ministry’s focus on workplace support forms part of a wider package of measures being highlighted during the 2026 World Breastfeeding Week campaign, whose theme is “Breastfeeding for a Sustainable Start in Life, Strengthening What Works.”
The campaign seeks to build awareness about the importance of breastfeeding, track progress, strengthen policies and guidelines, engage communities and galvanise action to promote and protect breastfeeding. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
