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PSG Hospitals celebrate first year Anniversary of Human Milk Bank

Mother’s Own Milk (MOM) is the best and ideal food for newborn babies by providing the necessary nutrients and immunity factors. In situations, where Mother’s Own Milk is unavailable or inadequate for any reason, the next best option is Pasteurized Donor Human Milk (PDHM). This serves as the best alternate choice in case of preterms babies, low birth weight babies and babies susceptible to Necrotizing Enterocolitis. The concept of Human Milk Banking has been gaining more attention and acceptance, both globally and nationally. PSG Hospital’s Kamadenu Human Milk Bank was inaugurated last year, on August 4, 2022 during the World Breastfeeding Week (August 1 to August 7). Kamadenu Human Milk Bank, functions on a Not- for -profit basis. The Kamadenu Milk Bank has been able to serve 104 in-hospital babies with the help of 90 donor mothers in the past one year. This year , 2023, we at PSG Hospitals are glad to be celebrating first year anniversary. We are thankful to the Donor families whom we consider as the pillars of our Milk Bank functioning and sustenance. The donors were felicitated at the event today. We are also thankful to our recipient families for supporting us to serve their babies better. PSG Hospitals, is also happy to announce that, Coimbatore North Ladies Circle 11 team has come forward in collaborating with us for a project to take this initiative to a higher and wider level. An MoU will be signed between both parties in the days to come. We are extremely thankful to be associating with a team that involves in a lot of social activities. A brief about the work at the Milk Bank which compromises the following steps:

1. Donor selection and recruitment, where the willing donors are screened for their eligibility by collecting their history pertaining to their overall health, medications and blood reports.
2. If found eligible, consent and registration process is done.
3. The donor is then educated on safe methods of expressing milk, demo of the pumping device is done as needed, steps on proper collection, storage and transport of milk to the Milk Bank by maintaining the cold chain.
4. Once received the milk is labelled, records entered and stored in a deep freezer at a temperature of about minus 20 degree celcius
5. The processing is done under sterile conditions using a special device called Pasteurizer and once again labelled accordingly and stored back in the freezer awaiting report.
6. From the previous step, one smaple from the batch is sent to the Microbiology Lab for testing and once the reports are cleared the milk is shifted to the Dispatch compartment of the freezer.
7. The milk is then dispatched to the eligible recipients as per the orders of the Paediatrician, whose parents also register and sign a consent to receive the milk.
8. Meanwhile,the necessary lactation support is being offered to the families by the Lactation team.

The Milk Bank is headed by Dr.S.Ramesh, Professor, Department of Paediatrics. The team members include Dr.Sumathi, Senior Resident, Dr.S.Manjari, Lactation Professional and staff nurse Kavitha who manages the operation within the Milk Bank. Currently we are serving our in-hospital NICU babies based on the eligible criteria and looking into expanding to serve outside babies too in the future. Our donor mothers have majorly been in-hospital mothers and we accept milk from outside donors too. With all the above services, we are proud to call the PSG Hospitals as Comprehensive Lactation Management Centre (CLMC) as per the National guidelines. For further queries, kindly contact 0422 4587190, 0422 4587191.

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