SOCIETY

Mumbai's babies have a breast milk bank

     Mumbai: Realising the significance of a mother's milk for an infant, a hospital in Mumbai has set up a "Breast Milk Bank". It provides the much-needed alternative to many women who are not in a position to lactate, or to secrete milk. Due to various physical conditions or circumstances a mother may not be able to provide her child with the all-important nutrient resulting in the baby's under development and ill health. Considering such desperate situations, the neo-natology department of the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Mumbai started this Milk bank. Established in 1989, the Mother's Milk Centre was deveoped with the basic idea of providing human milk to babies so as to ensure their healthy development through the early stages.Recipients at the bank usually include premature babies, abandoned babies and babies admitted at the hospitals with various ailments, including babies whose mothers are unwell and unable to feed them. At least 25 babies receive breast milk from the bank everyday. "It was a culture followed by the hospital even before the establishment of the centre. The milk bank started in 1989. But since1981 we have been using mother's milk only, because we knew that you have to give mother's milk because it has everything a baby needs--nutritive value, anti-infective value, the hormones. These substance that will mature various parts, nerves and GI track of the baby and so mother's milk contains everything. For, the reason that we were convinced with this theory from 1981, we are not using any other milk in this hospital,"says Armida Fernandez, the founder of the Mother Milk Centre. The milk is obtained from donors such as willing new mothers with an excess lactation or mothers whose babies are critically ill and not receive oral feed. The milk is collected, pasteurized and stored in freezers to ensure that it is bacteria free and safe. Mohina Bhargav, a mother of a premature baby receiving milk at the centre says: "My child is fed milk through a pipe and he takes it alsoI'm comfortable with the concept of my child being fed someone else's milk." The milk fed to babies through a pipe is of three kinds -- colostrums extracted in the first four days, transitional milk which is breast milk collected over the next five to ten days and mature milk collected after ten days considered to have less proteins. Established at a cost of rupees 250,000 (5747 dollars), the bank has an annual running cost of rupees 50,000 rupees (1149 dollars).
-Oct 5, 2005

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