The information was advanced, this Friday, by Elisa Gaspar, coordinator of the bank, which is part of the Maternidade Lucrécia Paim, in the capital.
Regarding the amount of milk donated, the person in charge – speaking to Angop, within the scope of the World Human Milk Donation Day, which was signed this Friday – informed that so far 206.5 liters have been collected.
According to the coordinator, the bank has more than 1000 donors, most of whom are female firefighters. However, this year they joined the women of the Migration and Foreigners Service, with plans to launch the women police officers, writes Angop.
Elisa Gaspar also mentioned that any healthy woman of legal age who breastfeeds and is not taking medication that affects the donation can join the cause and become a donor. For that, she added, they just have to contact the bank.
In addition, the coordinator regretted the fact that the milk was still insufficient, but left a word of thanks to the donor mothers. "Milk is still insufficient, but it is to thank the mothers who donate milk to us and our objective is to respond to the needs of babies in Luanda, in a first phase", she said, quoted by Angop.
Currently, the BLH has only three permanent employees, said the coordinator, who also added that there is no appropriate budget. Thus, she advanced: "we have difficulties in the acquisition of various expendable materials, such as soap, paper towels and reagents for the control of the quality of human milk".
The institution intends to travel beyond the provinces and, according to the official, the strategy involves strengthening the HMB in order to achieve consistent bases and thus expand to other provinces.
In turn, Liliana Aragão, a pediatric doctor, said that breast milk has benefits for both babies and mothers. In the case of mothers, he explained, it helps in the regression of the uterus, to reduce postpartum hemorrhage more quickly, among others, while in babies "breast milk is the only food that confers immunity, it has vitamins, proteins, mineral salts, water , everything in the ideal dose that the child needs and the mother's antibodies are passed on to the child", she said, thus underlining the relevance of the donation, as it helps the well-being of children as a liter of milk supplied can feed up to ten newborn babies a day, writes Angop.
It should be noted that the bank aims to promote breastfeeding, but also carry out activities such as the collection, processing and quality control of donated milk.
