This archive report was first published on 8 August 2019.
On a mission to save newborn lives, Nairobi's Pumwani Maternity Hospital has established East Africa's first breast milk bank, the second in Africa, to provide donated milk to babies in need.
According to the World Health Organization, premature babies have a higher chance of survival if fed breast milk instead of formula. This is exactly what the hospital's breast milk bank aims to achieve.
Launched in March by Kenya's Ministry of Health and PATH, a U.S.-based nonprofit health organization, the milk bank targets premature babies, those born with low birth weight, and those whose mothers may not be able to breastfeed them.
Donors are sourced among mothers within the hospital, and Mary Ndinda, one of the donors, said she is happy to save lives. She opted to donate to women who do not have milk or to babies who do not have mothers because her breasts were engorged and very painful just days after she gave birth.
While only 58 babies have benefited from the milk bank so far, hospital staff said more mothers are leaving with healthy newborns. The neonatal mortality rate has also seen a drastic drop, according to Keziah Njau, the head nurse at the hospital.
Kenyan authorities plan to set up other milk banks across the country, if the one in Nairobi proves a success. Dr. Elizabeth Kimani-Murage, the senior research scientist at Nairobi's African Population and Health Research Center, led the push for the Nairobi milk bank.
“Research where human milk banking has been implemented has shown that neonates like pre-term babies and low birth weight babies or sick children, when they are given human donor milk instead of formula, they survive better,” Kimani-Murage said.
