• Submitted by: Luis Manuel Mazorra
• Health and Medicine
• 03 / 02 / 2012

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The Human Milk Bank Provincial of Santiago de Cuba about 60 women have been donating to help save the lives of newborn children for health problems that have undergone surgeries that preclude receive important food from their mothers.

Dr. Isabel Dominguez, neonatologist and head of the new institution with just over a month of work at the Juan Bruno Zayas hospital, told reporters that have the technology donated by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and personal qualified to ensure the quality of that food.

He explained that being a mother requires a suitable donor health status, be breastfeeding for children under two years, meet the required hygiene standards and seek informed consent to offer the surplus milk.

This type of bank is a specialist service responsible for promoting, protecting and supporting breastfeeding as food for children up to age two, ensuring the proper growth and development and closer mother-child affective.

Valter Martinez, coordinator of the National Breastfeeding and Human Milk Banks, Ministry of Public Health in Cuba, noted recently that a fundamental process is pasteurization of the milk for 30 minutes at 62.5 degrees in a water bath.

This will manage to maintain the highest nutritional and immunological properties of the liquid, and remove germs, including the Human Immunodeficiency Virus-to administer it, said the expert.

They benefit the premature, very low birth weight children operated for gastrointestinal malformations, those unable to suck, and seriously ill children of mothers who can not nurse, he said.

The action is promoted primarily by the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative Mother and Child, but should be also the community, emphasized the manager.

In Cuba there are already such services in the provinces of Granma, Guantanamo, Las Tunas, Holguin and Pinar del Rio, at a total cost of $ 25 000.

Currently, about 35 percent of children worldwide receive support only human milk for the first six months of life.

Breastfeed longer intermittently until the infants within two years, would save about 1.5 million lives annually, according to UNICEF.