We should hold breast milk bank with both hands

What you need to know:

  • The issue: Breast milk bank
  • Our view: All healthy people who have some milk to donate should embrace the initiative. Like the Blood Bank, the development should roll out to all major health facilities across the country and citizens sensitised on the donation drive

The news that St Francis Hospital Nsambya, working with the Ministry of Health, will starting next year establish a human breast milk plant should have come a decade ago.

To appreciate this, let us take this into perspective. The 2016 Uganda Health Demographic and Health Survey indicates that the numbers of mothers who die in labour is still high, despite a slight reduction from 438 in 2011 to 368 deaths per 100,000 live births. This means many children are left without mothers and, therefore, without breast milk. Also, many mothers who give birth prematurely have had a rough time finding a milk donor.

The other is that when a mother gives birth to many children, say quadruplets, they will need reinforcement of breast milk from second parties and such a plant comes in handy.

Besides those occurrences, it is advisable that children need breast milk in the first six months of their lives because such milk contains a combination of protein, vitamins and fat and is also packed with disease-fighting substances. Numerous studies have shown that stomach viruses, lower respiratory illnesses, ear infections, and meningitis occur less often in breastfed babies and if they are to happen, they will be less severe.

Just last year, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the US said children who are breastfed have a 20 per cent lower risk of dying between the ages of 28 days and one year than children who weren’t breastfed.

With the new initiative, we will not have to worry for children’s survival in case of early death of the mothers, among others. As the ministry and hospital put it, this will also benefit babies born prematurely whose mothers don’t immediately produce breast milk and those born underweight below 1.5 kilogrammes.

So, all healthy people who have some milk to donate should embrace the initiative.

However, caution against abuse of the initiative should be put in red letters. Like the hospital says, mothers who stubbornly refuse to breastfeed their children will not be considered. And owing to the process of collecting it and the high demand, it must be given only when it is a must.

Likewise, the hospital has said the milk will be free of charge. So no one should sell the product.
By and by, like the Blood Bank, the development should roll out to all major health facilities across the country and citizens sensitised on the donation drive.