JOIN USAs the Vani Vilas Hospital prepares to house the state’s first-ever breast milk bank, doctors and paramedics will be sent to Lucknow to get a first-hand experience of its maintenance.
Sources in the Department of Health and Family Welfare said a team from Karnataka will visit Lucknow’s King George Medical College that has a fully functional breast milk bank. The Vani Vilas Hospital is affiliated to the Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (BMCRI).
“They (in Lucknow) have a Comprehensive Lactation Management Centre,” said a source.
“It is a state of the art facility and has been a successful model. The biomedical engineers here need to be trained on various aspects,” the source added.
The visit will also minimise the need for corrective measures. “They're subtle changes such as partitions for each mother’s unit that has not been completed yet. We’ll go by their model,” the source said.
Vani Vilas Hospital medical superintendent Dr Geetha Shivamurthy said the team will go as observers. “The HOD of paediatrics, a biomedical engineer and other staff will witness how the centre is functioning,” Dr Geetha said.
“All four pieces of equipment have arrived (for the centre here). We’re in the final phase of perfecting them based on (the Lucknow hospital’s) model,” she added.
The centre will collect milk from mothers who express excess milk, who have their babies in ICU and cannot therefore feed and those who have lost their babies.
Doctors at Vani Vilas Hospital said milk will be given free of cost to preterm babies with low birth weight or to babies whose mothers cannot express milk.