Tamil Nadu Woman Starts Breast Milk Donation Camp, Saves Lives Of Hundreds Of Babies

Cases of abandoned babies fighting for their lives in hospitals often come to light in our country. While some are abandoned by their parents only to be adopted by kind strangers, a few other suffer medical complications. Many times hospitals also approach lactating mothers and ask them to donate breast milk for babies who are in dire need of it.

In a similar case, a young mother and lactation counselor, Baby Shree Karan, came across a post on Facebook that required a breast milk donor for a sick premature baby urgently. Without a second thought, she reached the hospital and donated 20ml breast milk for the baby.

Ever since then, Baby Shree Karan resolved to help sick and abandoned babies by donating breast milk. Accordingly, along with her friends Koushalya Jagadeesh and Ramyaa Sankaranarayanan, Shree started milk donation camps every Sunday at Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Institute of Child Health (ICH) in Egmore, Tamil Nadu.

“We have a Facebook page called Mommy Talks, in which 2,000 mothers from across Tamil Nadu are members. We had created this page to give parenting support. After seeing the need for breast milk for babies at ICH we started to hold milk donation camps. We have them on Sundays usually as many donors are working women. If 10 moms come, we could collect one litre of milk,” Shree Karan told The New Indian Express.

“On an average there is need for 1,500 to 1,800 ml per day. But on an average we collect only 1,200 per day, despite mothers coming forward to donate generously,” Dr. C N Kamalarathnam, Head of Neonatology Department, ICH said.

Talking about the selection criteria of the donor, Dr. Kamalarathnam said, “We prefer mothers who have given birth to three to six months before donating as they would have been screened for all infectious diseases, including HIV, before delivery. If it has been over six months, we screen the donors.”

In order to encourage more and more lactating women to participate in the donation camps, the hospital also offers a facility of picking up breast milk from home. A college student, M Ashok Kumar, who is one of the volunteers said, “When I cannot go, I share it with my friends on social media for my friends and whoever is free will volunteer to deliver it. There is not much awareness about breast milk donation. More awareness should be created.”

“I read about the breast milk donation drive. I wanted to donate my excess feed to the babies in need so I consulted my pediatrician. The doctor directed me to government hospitals. Since I have a three-month-old baby and cannot travel to the hospitals to donate I asked for a volunteer to help with the delivery.” a donor Nisha Rajagopalan told TNIE.

Breast milk is nothing less than the elixir of life especially for premature and sick babies. We hope more and more people take inspiration from these women and participate in setting up such breast milk donation camps all over the country.