Waking up to the benefits of setting up human milk banks that can help save many premature, surrogate or sick babies and newborns who cannot be nursed by their own mothers, the Union Health Ministry on Wednesday finally launched such a centre at one of its hospitals here.
The human milk bank and lactation counselling centre, 'Vatsalya - Maatri Amrit Kosh', at lady Hardinge Medical Hospital will collect, pasteurise, test and store milk donated by lactating mothers and make it available for infants in need.
After inaugurating the centre, Mishra said that this would be the largest human milk bank and lactation counselling centre available under the public sector in North India. He further added that it is envisaged that with this donor human milk bank, all newborns in and around Delhi will have access to life saving human milk regardless of the circumstances of their birth.
The Centre which has been established in collaboration with the Norwegian government, Oslo University and Norway India Partnership Initiative (NIPI) has facilities to test the quality of milk to ensure that it is free of all pathogens and safe for the babies besides setting for lactating mothers to express milk.
Mishra said that even when we know the potential of mother's milk for a child, breastfeeding rates are low in India. "The early initiation of breastfeeding is only 40 per cent, even when the institutional delivery has increased to 78.9 per cent.
"In view of this, we launched Mothers Absolute Affection (MAA) programme to create awareness regarding breastfeeding as being the most cost-effective way of enhancing the child's immunity," he added.
Nils RagnarKamsvag, Ambassador of Norway to India said that human milk increases survival rate for those neonates whose mother cannot produce enough milk.
While the Government has been late entrant in the sector, many private hospitals have already set up such banks, offering collected breast milk to the needy children in their institutions.
Dr Ajay Khera, deputy commissioner (incharge), child and adolescent health programme in the ministry said that to regulate the milk banks in the country, national guidelines on human milk banks will be released soon. The guidelines will have detailed safety standards, which will make screening of donors for various diseases like HIV, Hepatitis B test and syphilis test and, compulsory.
Arun Gupta, pediatrician, Coordinator of the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India and a member of the Prime Minister's Council on India's Nutrition Challenges, suggested Brazil as a model for India to emulate. Keeping in mind the complications associated with formula feeding to the sick, tiny preterm neonates and mothers' inability to breastfeed in the initial period, there is a need to establish human milk banks in all level II and level III health facilities, he added.