Awareness drives leads to rise in breast milk donation at Kalwa hosp

THANE: In order to increase the collection of breast milk in the civic-run Kalwa hospital’s milk bank, the hospital authorities—along with social workers—are spreading awareness about the importance to store breast milk. They are also motivating new mothers at the hospital to donate milk.
This initiative began two months and the hospital has so far been been receiving a positive response. They have seen a marginal rise in breast milk collection. The authorities said that this milk can help infants whose mothers have passed away, pre-mature babies, surrogate children and abandoned infants.

“We have appointed around 40 women volunteers for the initiative and have even trained them. Sround seven women come everyday for counselling. Now, under the name of ‘Yashodha Mai’ group they encourage new mothers to donate their excess milk. Since the past two months, which is from April 17, there has been a marginal increase in milk collection. Earlier there used to be around 100ml to 150ml collection per day, now it has increased to around 200ml to 260ml,” said Dr. Sandhya Khadse, dean at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Hospital.

The group spoke to mothers on how they should take care of children and keep them healthy and clean and not to give them solid food untill they are a few months old.

“As most of these women don’t know the basic things about handling a child, we teach them about how to go about it. We also explain the importance of mother’s milk. We ask them to make sure that they feed their infants only mother’s milk for a few months. We have also told them to donate excessive milk at the hospital’s milk bank,” said Tejashree chavan, member of the group.

The hospital has seen a positive response since the initiative as more women have been donating, rather than throwing away the milk.

“Out of the 15 women who were counselled about donating milk on Thursday, six donated it the next day. The new mother’s approach me or the hospital members if they have any queries. Recently few have even assured to come back to donate more after getting discharged. Our timings of donating milk is from 10am to 4pm, but seeing the good response the timing may get extended,” said Dr. Tejal Gujar, medical officer at the hospital.

A woman who had delivered a baby girl just three days ago started donating milk since the second day of her delivery. “After delivery, I was informed about the benefits of donating milk and how it could help infants who are in need of it. So I decided to donate milk and have been doing so since the last two days. I have decided that even after getting discharged I will donate milk here,” said Vaibhavi Jedhe (24), a patient.