Thane: In a quest to provide mother’s milk to the less fortunate newborns, the Thane municipal corporation (
TMC)-run Kalwa hospital will soon flag off a unique ‘human milk van’ venture to urge lactating mothers to give away excess milk to feed those infants who are deprived of it.
Although the concept of human milk collection is prevalent in the West, there is little awareness on the issue here, resulting in many newborns who are either premature or whose mothers are reported sick or just abandoned by the family, are fed powdered milk.
The hospital’s human milk collection unit currently finds very few donors, leading to acute shortage of milk. This inadvertently affects the growth and health of
babies who are given formula milk.
“Every day we conduct almost 40 to 50 deliveries. But only a handful mothers come forward to donate excess milk. This is because of lack of awareness and sometimes no proper information. A mother who has undergone a natural delivery barely stays in the hospital for two days. The ones who undergo caesarean deliveries are in the hospital for maximum a week. So, even if these mothers donate milk, it is not much,’’ said Dr. Sandhya Khadse, dean of the civic-run Chatrapati Shivaji Memorial hospital.
The hospital data reveals that as against 3,950 ml milk collected in December 2017, there is a rise in the volume with the highest collection of 6,235 ml reported in February. As per the records of WHO, each year 2.7 million children die globally due to malnutrition. Optimal breastfeeding is so critical that it could save the lives of over 8.20 lakh children below the age of 5 each year.
There are around 13 human milk banks in the country, while five are in Mumbai, one is in Thane district.
“We have been sanctioned around Rs 1 crore from the municipal corporation for the human milk bank. So, we are going to make use of that money to spread awareness and even to make it easier for the donors to reach to us and start a human milk van,” said Dr. Khadse.
The milk which is collected at CSMH is first pasteurized while it is in stainless steel bottles, the process helps the milk to heat at a uniform temperature so that the proteins and nutrients stay in the milk and it destroys the viruses and bacteria. Later a 2ml sample from this milk is sent to the microbiology lab to check if there is any inappropriate growth, after no faults are found, the milk is stored in fridge or deep freezer. The milk can be stored for up to six months.
