After a year of successful operation of the Kozhikode Breast milk bank, the health department announced that similar banks will be set up at the Women and Children hospitals at Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur. The whole purpose of this state-of-the-art breast milk bank is to promote breastfeeding and to give all the support to kids and new mothers. The Kozhikode breast milk bank since its opening a year back has so far helped 1,813 kids with 1,397 mothers donating breast milk to the bank. So far 1,26,225 ml of breast milk has been collected and 1,16,315 ml has been distributed.

Breast milk is most important in the health care of babies. It is very important to breastfeed the newborn within the first hour and exclusively breastfeed for the first 6 months. But some mothers are not able to breastfeed their babies due to various reasons like infectious diseases mothers, low birth weight babies, mothers on ventilators, etc. The milk bank was set up to ensure breast milk for such children as well.

The scheme involves collecting breast milk from willing nursing mothers, storing it, and distributing healthy and pure breast milk after all the mandatory tests to needy babies. The main donors are the mothers of the babies who come to the hospital and the staff. Milk collected from four or five people is combined and pasteurized at about 60 degrees centigrade. A specially equipped room for its storage and adequate fridge, deep freezer and other facilities are provided. Culture tests will also be done to confirm the presence of bacteria. It can be stored in the freezer for months. Milk is given to the babies only after the tests are completed.