Save Babies: An initiative for donating excess breast milk

There are many mothers who face issues with excess breast milk and therefore suffer from conditions like clogged ducts, mastitis and breast abscess. The practical solution is to express and throw away the extra milk to relieve themselves. Through the SaveBabies initiative, they now have an opportunity to share their love and milk with other sick babies by gifting them the best chance at a healthy future. If you are a mother with excess breast milk supply and are looking for ways to manage it, you may consider donating your excess milk towards the sick and premature babies, who need it the most.

Sindhu S.J. from Bangalore has been a donor with SaveBabies for the last 6 months and has donated over 150 litres of breastmilk while exclusively nursing her 9-month-old baby. “I cannot emphasize enough on the importance of breastmilk for premature and sick babies and therefore would urge more moms to come forward and donate their excess milk. There is no better feeling than knowing that you could be of help for someone in need” added Sindhu

SaveBabies is an initiative born out of passion towards saving babies who are born early. Evidence clearly highlights the benefits gained, when premature babies are provided optimum nutrition through an exclusive human milk diet.

Statistics show that India has around 3.5 million babies each year who are born prematurely (before 37 weeks). That’s an astonishing 20% of the total babies born each year. A large number of these babies suffer from complications such as necrotizing enterocolitis, growth deficits, sepsis and infection; all primarily due to lack of human milk intake. Many of these mothers are severely ill or recovering from surgery and are not in the mental and physical condition to breastfeed. The SaveBabies initiative is helping create awareness about human milk donation by healthy breastfeeding mothers, who have excess breast milk supply than the consumptive needs of their own babies.

‘Save Babies’ is an initiative to encourage breastmilk donation as a norm rather than an exception. We are working to develop a huge community across the country to support, educate & create awareness about the importance of accepting and donating human milk. Through this initiative we provide complete support to the donor mothers by guiding, counselling, testing for infections, logistics as well as providing storage bottles for expression informed lactation consultant Dr. Geetika Gangwani.

Our vision is to ensure that all hospitals across the country should have access to screened and pasteurised donor human. We are bringing together doctors, lactation experts, parents, clinical fraternity, community health workers, and family support organisations to spread awareness about the importance of human milk donation, added Dr. Geetika Gangwani.

According to Dr. Vikram Reddy, Chief Scientific Officer, NeoLacta Lifesciences, “We believe healthcare professionals should come forward and support the initiative by educating their patients about excess milk donation and usage of exclusive human milk diet for new-born infants, especially those born early and/or with low birth weight as there is clear evidence suggesting that exclusive human milk nutrition is life saving for these tiny babies”.

To know more about SaveBabies and human milk donation, please visit www.savebabies.in or call on SaveBabies helpline 1800-103-2456