Human milk banks save India’s most vulnerable newborns

Human milk banks in India are quietly saving the lives of premature and vulnerable newborns whose own mothers cannot feed them, Times of India reports. Dr Poonam Sidana, director of neonatology at CK Birla Hospital, Delhi, described the system as 'one mother saving the baby of another mother'. The first milk bank in India and Asia was established at Sion Hospital, Mumbai in 1989.

Dr Satish Tiwari, convener of the Human Milk Banking Association of India, said milk banks are needed across India for babies separated from mothers due to illness, death, or abandonment. For premature infants weighing as little as 500g, donor human milk reduces the risk of necrotising enterocolitis and infections better than formula. Doctors stress that a mother's own milk remains the ideal, with donor milk used only as a transitional resource.