Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa inaugurated 352 rooms in bus terminals across the state to help lactating mothers who are travelling to feed their newborns.
World Breast Feeding Week (August 1-7) is going on right now. Deccan Chronicle reported that Jayalalithaa also inaugurated Mother’s Milk Banks in seven government hospitals, including Tiruchirappalli and Madurai. The official release for the same read,
The Chief Minister has advised that a small table and bench should be placed in rooms for lactating mothers. Through this initiative the health of babies will be safeguarded and avoid child mortality. Travelling mothers sometimes have to wait in bus terminals where they could face difficulties in feeding babies. These facilities were set up to address the problems of such lactating mothers. ‘Breastfeeding and Work-Let’s Make it Work’ is this year’s theme for the seven-day breastfeeding week. The week highlights the difficulties faced by working women in lactating their babies, and also aims to remove such obstacles by prioritizing feeding newborns.
The Mothers’ Milk Banks were inaugurated in seven state- run hospitals in Tiruchirappalli, Madurai, Coimbatore, Theni, Salem and Thanjavur. This was besides the over 160-year old existing Government Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Hospital at Egmore. Each of these banks have been provided with equipment worth Rs. 10 lakh to preserve the milk donated by mothers. Such milk can be stored for three months and will be given to babies who cannot get milk from their mothers.
Now, the number of such state-run banks in Tamil Nadu now stands at eight.
Have a look at video of this remarkable initiative in Tamil Nadu –
The news information is sourced from Deccan Chronicle
