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The first film festival aimed at raising awareness of infant and maternal health issues has arrived in Kampala, capital city of Uganda.

The Baby! International Film Festival is the first to be held in an African nation and it is already provoking debate over maternal healthy issues.

Featuring films on topics such as breast-feeding, the care of Aids orphans in South Africa, fistula and childbirth, the festival is open to the public as well as NGOs and health official.

It was brought to Uganda by Marvin Nyansio, founder of the children's charity Rejoice Uganda, who has been caring for around 50 orphans in the Wakiso district of central Uganda.

"We wanted to use the films to highlight the issues and show how more ordinary people can get involved in efforts to promote safe motherhood and supporting vulnerable children," he told The Guardian.

Though attendance was not quite on the level of the upcoming Cannes festival, fellow founder and Nigerian film-maker Folasade Olowu said that it wasn't bad for a first event and representatives from health NGOs, the United Nations Population Fund and the Ministry of Health were present.

Louise Hogarth's Angels in the Dust, a documentary following a therapist in rural South Africa who starts a centre for Aids orphans in South Africa, is one of the more popular films to be screened and, with many Ugandan children growing up with HIV, is of particular relevance in Kampala.

Victoria Kajja, from the Straight Talk Foundation, said: "There is a challenge of how to deal with young positives. They are going to need full sexual lives, to get married and to have children.

"So, how can they do this [when] some of them do not want to disclose their HIV status?"

And films following the stories of two pregnant women, one via a midwife at a public health centre, the other with a traditional birth attendant (TBA), hope to highlight the dangers of childbirth.

But though a project implemented by Marie Stopes International to offer expectant mothers a kind of healthcare voucher, standards of maternal healthcare and education still have some way to go.

The Baby! film festival may, however, offer another step towards safe childbirth and care.

What do you think? Can the Baby! International Film Festival help to improve maternal health in Uganda? Leave your comments below...

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