Bringing breast milk to infants in need: Telangana to get first human milk bank

  In a first for Telangana, Hyderabad’s Niloufer Hospital will get a human milk bank that could feed as many as 600 babies at a given point. The milk bank would be open from the end of August. Hospital authorities said that the process of pasteurization and storage of milk have been adopted from the guidelines of the Human Milk Bank Association of North America, The New Indian Express reported. The report added that the milk will be stored at 70 degrees Celsius which could be used for six months from the day after pasteurization. The initiative has been taken up by Dhaatri - The Mother’s Milk Bank and Youth for Seva, an NGO with the support of the Telangana government.    The intent behind the human milk bank was to provide every newborn with adequate colostrum—the milk produced by mothers right after delivery, which is vital for immunity and growth of the child, said doctors associated with Dhaatri. Santosh Kumar, Executive Director of Dhaatri, said that there are only 15 such milk centres across the country. Mothers of pre-term babies struggle to lactate, which forces parents and hospitals to use substitutes such as powdered formula milk. Keeping this in view, we have set up this milk bank, where mothers can collect expressed milk which would be stored and later given to preterm babies, says, Telangana Today. It must be noted that in Telangana only 37% of newborns are breastfed within one hour of birth which is lower than the national average of 41.6%, Nikhila Henry from The Hindu had reported.