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Protect breastfeeding – A shared responsibility

05 August 2021 | Story Dr Chantell Witten | Photo Supplied

Opinion article by Dr Chantell Witten, Division of Health Professions Education, University of the Free State.

World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated every year from 1-7 August. In South Africa, it coincides with Women’s Month and gives us the opportunity to reflect on how far we have come and how far we still have to go to achieve gender equity in different spheres of life. Even more reason for us in the academic sphere to stop and think about the areas of support that may still need attention and effort to correct.

In the context of protecting breastfeeding this would speak to the Code of Good Conduct in the Labour Act which affords pregnant and breastfeeding women protection and support. In extreme cases it means protection from exposure to hazardous substances, but in the general setting of the work environment this relates to workplace support for a private and safe place to express breastmilk. One institution made headlines when a staff member was secretly videoed while she was expressing breastmilk. What is also needed is to put in place a policy that guides on how university property such as a fridge may or may not be used to store expressed breastmilk, or how to deal with a manager who insists on holding meetings in a woman’s scheduled milk-expressing time slots. The law may indicate that you are entitled to two 30-minute time slots to express but it is quite another issue to get your colleagues to accommodate or respect your biological needs.

Protecting breastfeeding

Besides the protection of employees, the government in its commitment to improve child health and nutrition has committed to protect breastfeeding from the undue influence of the infant-formula industry by implementing the recommendations of the International Code for the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. South Africa approved the Regulations Relating to Foodstuff for Infants and Young Children (R991) to control the marketing and promotion of infant formula by limiting how the product may be marketed and how the industry may engage with the public and child health and development professionals, in particular.

While many are aware of the prohibition to advertise or to promote and distribute free or incentivised sales of infant formula, many may not be aware of the limitations placed on academics and researchers. The academic and research fraternity has had a long and conflicted relationship and history with the infant-formula industry. Many departments and individual researchers have received funding, conference sponsorship and gifts from the infant-formula industry. In the early 2000s at the height of the HIV epidemic, the Department of Health recommended that women living with HIV should not breastfeed and instead provided six months of free formula milk, inadvertently implying that health professionals approved of infant formula. While the national Department of Health has since stopped the distribution of free infant formula through the programme for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) from 2011, many health professionals trained in the early years continue giving mixed messages to mothers and display limited skills to promote and support breastfeeding.

So how do we protect breastfeeding in the academic setting?

As more women enter academia, managers and the institutional leadership need to be cognisant and purposeful in developing a breastfeeding culture by granting women the protections afforded them by the Labour Law. Furthermore, in all spheres of academia and research, and as an institution, we need to guard against conflict of interest and conflicted relationships with the infant-formula industry. We need to do due diligence by raising the awareness of R991. All child health and development professionals should be acquainted with R991 through their curricula, and we should individually and collectively be accountable in our conduct to protect, promote and support breastfeeding as a human right, an investment in health and development, and for a sustainable future. There can be no greater dividend than to invest in optimal nutrition for infants and our children. They are the future.

News Archive

Ms Oprah Winfrey to receive an honorary doctorate in Education from our university

2011-06-10

Ms Oprah Winfrey

Invitation to the public (PDF document)

Invitation to UFS staff and students (PDF document)

Media accreditation (PDF document)

Street closures on 23 and 24 June 2011 (Bloemfontein Campus)

Map from the Bloemfontein Airport to the UFS (PDF document)

Map of the UFS (PDF document)

For more information, please contact:
Tel: 051 401 3000
E-mail: info@ufs.ac.za

Staff and students from our Qwaqwa Campus, please contact:
Dr Elias Malete's office

Our university will be awarding an honorary doctorate in Education to the global media icon, philanthropist and public educator, Ms Oprah Winfrey, on its Bloemfontein Campus on Friday, 24 June 2011.

Both the Council and Senate of our university gave strong support to awarding the honorary doctorate to Ms Winfrey.

By awarding the honorary doctorate, we want to recognise Ms Winfrey’s accomplishments and unparalleled work as a global media leader, as well as a philanthropist with vision and foresight in the field of education and development.

“It is a great privilege for us to be the first South African university to honour Ms Winfrey in this way and to be able to recognise a global icon of her stature,” says Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of our university.

Ms Winfrey already holds honorary doctorates from Princeton University as well as Duke University in the United States, among others.

Reaching millions of viewers in more than 150 countries with her award-winning programme, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she has brought genuine change into the lives of ordinary people during its 25-year run.

Capitalising on the power of the media and her standing as a global icon, Ms Oprah Winfrey has brought a range of critical social and educational matters to the attention of her viewers. In 2000, she expanded her media reach through the successful creation of O, The Oprah Magazine, which then debuted in South Africa in 2002. Earlier this year, she extended her media influence through the launch of a US cable channel, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.

Her Book Club has had a dramatic and profound impact on the reading habits of America and those of people in other parts of the world, while her public charity, Oprah’s Angel Network, collected approximately $80 million over a period of twelve years in aid of building schools, women’s shelters and youth centres across the globe.

Through her private charity, The Oprah Winfrey Foundation, hundreds of grants have been awarded in support of empowering women, children and families, and The Oprah Winfrey Scholars Program, supports hundreds of university students, in the United States and elsewhere, who are committed to giving back and making a difference in their communities and country.

During a December 2000 visit to former president Nelson Mandela, Ms Winfrey pledged to build a school for girls in South Africa. This gift was to become the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which opened in 2007.

The Academy embodies her strong belief in the power of education to change the future. The Academy provides a unique educational opportunity to over 400 young girls, in Grades 7 through 12, from all over South Africa. These young women come from small rural towns and the big cities, but they share a common background in that they all come from poor families.

Ms Winfrey believes that the Academy can contribute to the development of a new generation of women leaders, deeply imbued with a sense of public service. The Academy stands as a beacon of hope in the educational landscape of this country.

More recently, Ms Winfrey has turned her attention to the failing public-school system in the United States and has brought the impact thereof on the lives of many people in America to the attention of the American public and policy-makers. Even more profoundly, she has highlighted how poor education entrenches poverty and social exclusion. In this sense, Ms Winfrey demonstrates the interconnection between education struggles in the USA and South Africa in powerful ways.

Both the Interim Director of our university’s International Institute for Studies in Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice, Mr John Samuel, and Prof. Jansen have worked for and with Ms Winfrey on matters of education at her school in Johannesburg, and in South Africa more broadly.

The South African public is invited to share in this occasion, and attend the award ceremony. A limited number of tickets will be available to the public from Wednesday, 15 June 2011 to Wednesday, 22 June 2011, and can be purchased from Computicket at an administrative cost of R10 a ticket.

Media Release
11 June 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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