Generating political priority for breastfeeding and the adoption of Kenya's 2012 BMS act : the importance of women's leadership
Abstract
- Abstract
- en The World Health Organization recommends initiating breastfeeding in the first hour of life, exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and continued breastfeeding for at least two years. Aggressive marketing of breast milk substitutes (BMS) undermines breastfeeding and is linked to adverse child and maternal health outcomes. This is particularly problematic in the Global South, where socioeconomic conditions often amplify the risks associated with BMS. The adoption of national BMS legislation in line with the 1981 International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes is therefore crucial but difficult due to strong opposition from the transnational formula milk industry. Breastfeeding advocates in Kenya were able to overcome this powerful opposition when the country adopted a strict BMS Act in 2012, which has since facilitated and protected remarkable improvements in breastfeeding rates. We conduct a qualitative case study to identify the political enablers of the successful adoption of this important law.
People & roles
Origins & context
- Title
- Generating political priority for breastfeeding and the adoption of Kenya's 2012 BMS act : the importance of women's leadership
- Publication type
- Article
- Language
- English
- Journal
- Globalization and Health
- Year
- 2025
- volume
- 21
- pages
- 32
- Status
- Peer reviewed
- Relation
- Open Access Publizieren
Identifiers & sources
- ISSN
- 1744-8603
Full text
- Full text
- RESEARCH Open Access © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Wamahiu et al. Globalization and Health (2025) 21:32 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-025-01127-2 Globalization and Health *Correspondence: Maryanne Wamahiu maryanne.wamahiu@uni-bayreuth.de 1Faculty of Life Sciences: Food, Nutrition and Health, University of Bayreuth, Kulmbach, Germany 2Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany 3School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Abstract Background The World Health Organization recommends initiating breastfeeding in the first hour of life, exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and continued breastfeeding for at least two years. Aggressive marketing of breast milk substitutes (BMS) undermines breastfeeding and is linked to adverse child and maternal health outcomes. This is particularly problematic in the Global South, where socioeconomic conditions often amplify the risks associated with BMS. The adoption of national BMS legislation in line with the 1981 International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes… Read the full text about 11,348 words
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