Baby Friendly Hospital Initiatives
TFNC’s experience in child health and nutrition has allowed Tanzania to join other nations of the world to implement the WHO and UNICEF Baby Friendly Hospital Initiatives. Since the take off of BFHI in Tanzania, at the zenith of global efforts to support breastfeeding in 1992, there are now 68 hospitals in the country which have been recognized to implement the “Ten Steps” to successful breastfeeding which are the cornerstone of BFHI. These hospitals have been declared baby friendly.

National Regulation on Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes and Designated Products
In its efforts to promote appropriate breastfeeding practices for safeguarding the nutrition and health of infants and young children, TFNC played a great role to enable the government of Tanzania to adopt the WHO/UNICEF International Code of Marketing of Breast milk Substitutes and Designated Products. The International Code was passed by the World Health Assembly in 1981. In order to promote appropriate feeding of infant and young children, the Tanzania Government adopted the International code into a national regulation which was incorporated into the Food (Control of Quality) Act number 10 of 1978. The local version of the code is known as “The Food (Control of Quality) Marketing of Breast milk Substitutes and Designated Products Regulations of 1994”. Since then this instrument has been very useful in promoting child survival and development hence fulfilling the rights of children as stipulated in both national and international instruments.

Maternity Protection
Maternity protection at workplace is a legal and social recognition of the contribution that women make by having babies. The International Labour Organization (ILO) first recognized the importance of maternity protection in 1919 in its third convention(C3). In 1952, a second ILO maternity protection convention was adopted (C103), and in 2000 a third.

There are seven key elements to maternity protection in general. These elements are: scope (who is covered), leave, benefits, health protection, job protection and non-discrimination, breastfeeding breaks and breastfeeding facilities. The goal is to have these elements implemented as a minimum standard in national legislation on maternity protection.

In line with ILO maternity protection, and as a measure to support and improve child health and nutrition without jeopardizing the rights of women to work in both formal and informal sectors, the Tanzania Government through the Employment and Labour Relations Act No 6 of 2004 gives women employees entitlement of 84 days' paid maternity leave; or 100 days paid maternity leave if the employee gives birth to more than one child at the same time. Also an employee is entitled to an additional 84 days paid maternity leave within the leave cycle if the child dies within a year of birth. Where an employee is breast-feeding a child, the employer is liable to allow the employee to feed the child during working hours up to a maximum of two hours per day. The same instrument provides married men with 3 days paternity leave (which should be taken within the first week following the birth of the baby). TFNC has been one of the major advocates of maternity protection for the purpose of supporting, protecting and promoting breastfeeding which is very important for ensuring child's and women's health and nutrition.

Maternity protection in many countries including Tanzania covers women who are employed in the formal sector, that is only those who have entered into a formal contract of employment and/or who have contributed to specific funding such as insurance or other such schemes. In other words, whole sectors of the economy are excluded, for example, women working in informal sector or independent workers. Therefore a need is recognized to examine possibilities of extending maternity protection to women in the informal sector as they do not enjoy any formal maternity protection. It should be noted that informal workers constitute a large proportion of the workers in Tanzania (probably up to 80%). The same applies to rural women who work in the fields as farm labourers or farmers and who toil long hours doing back breaking work.

Another challenge is to extend the period of maternity leave to at least 18 weeks so as to enable women practice exclusive breastfeeding for the firs six months of the child's' life as recommended by ILO convention 184, recommendation 191 of 2001. Some advocates of women's' rights have a fear with regards to this extension that it will jeopardise employment for women since in this era of globalisation, employers especial in private sector may prefer men than women employees.

Infant feeding and HIV/AIDS
Prevention of mother-to-child transmission is one of the core interventions of TFNC’s Infant and Young Child Nutrition Programme. TFNC has been providing technical support in areas such as training of health workers and other service providers in all aspects of breastfeeding and infant feeding options to enable them counsel HIV positive women, among others.

Facts on infant and young child feeding

World Breastfeeding Week
As a strategy to promote exclusive breastfeeding from birth to 6 months and continued breastfeeding with complementary feeding up to 24 months and beyond, Tanzanians join hands with people from all over the world to commemorate the World Breastfeeding Week in August 1-7 every year. TFNC as a leading organization in the World Breastfeeding Week celebrations organizes print and electronic media campaigns, public rallies, breastfeeding counseling corners for public members and lactation management sessions for health workers .

Complementary feeding
TFNC is working with the network of Reproductive and Child Health Services in the country to promote appropriate complementary feeding practices. This line of action involves utilization of reproductive and child health services to educate women about the golden rules for appropriate complementary feeding.
 

Research and Publications
Research is an important component to all TFNC’s projects and programmes. There are two sub sets of investigations: those done by TFNC and those conducted by peer institutions, private organizations and individuals. In 2003 TFNC conducted an operational research to investigate knowledge and practice about infant feeding options available for HIV infected women in Tanzania. Other important research documents and publications are available at the Centre’s library.