Lactation
Need for more human milk
Increase of pre term babies has led to deficit of milk in lactation banks of Bangalore
T Sree Praharshitha
10th Nov, 2022
New mothers who cannot lactate due to hormonal issues and stress are in need of human milk for their babies. Government lactation bank says that they get donation of one litre human milk per day and their first priority is for the babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Dr Sreenath Manikanti, Senior Consultant Neonatology and member of Aadhya human milk bank says that this year the demand has slightly increased and they get four to five requests per day but they can meet only two to three requests, because of the shortage of donor milk.
Private banks say that they couldn’t meet the needs There are three private milk banks in Bangalore. These milk banks on the other hand say that they could meet only 60 percent of the needs due to fewer donors.
Dr Shagufta Parveen, Senior Lactation Consultant at Herwellness, says that the best possible choice should be educating women, about their own milk and breast feeding strategies before the post birth.
Doctors say that mother’s milk is very important for babies as the absence of it leads to infection and allergies in the gut. If the child couldn’t use the correct form get the milk from both the mother and donation banks they go to the commercial formula from the market which is not easily digestible in the babies.
Sonam Gupta, a donor says that she had a lot of human milk production at her child’s birth. The doctors then suggested her about the concept of donation and she thought that it would be a good thing to do.
‘’I knew that the milk is very important for pre mature babies and some of the babies where they do not directly get the breast milk, so I thought maybe if my donation can help them, then why not?’’ said the donor.
The milk banks say that they are working so hard to get the donors and awareness drives are being held very often to raise the knowledge for this initiative.
