Bengaluru: The Health Department has decided to set up four new “Amritdhare” (Human Milk Bank) centres in Karntaka to protect newborns suffering from lack of breast milk. These centres will be fully operational within the next two months.
Over 68% of babies who are born prematurely and underweight, whose mothers do not produce breast milk and who are separated from their mothers due to various reasons, have a lack of breast milk. To correct this, the health department will open one human milk bank each in Mysore, Belagavi, Bangalore, Kalaburagi, and currently the process of purchasing the necessary ice line cooling machine, mixing machine, dryer, pasteurising machine, and breast pump is going on in full swing.
Here mother to child and donor mother’s milk is allowed to be given to another child. Collected milk is screened and pasteurised at the initial stage to destroy germs. It can then be stored in a bottle at 18 degrees Celsius for a maximum period of 6 months. One has to shell out Rs. 3000 to 4000 for pasteurised 150 ml milk in a private centre. But it is provided free of cost to the needy babies in the Government hospital.
All healthy mothers with excess breast milk can donate. The donor mother is first tested for HIV, Hepatitis B and C, VDRL. Only those who have received a negative report in the medical examination can donate breast milk.
One human milk bank each has been established at Vanivilas Hospital in Bangalore and Lady Goschen Hospital in Mangaluru with private public partnership since one year. So far, about 300 litres of milk has been pasteurised in the two centers and distributed to more than 1000 newborns free of charge. More than 120 donors donate breast milk on average every day in two centres.