1st breast milk bank to be established in SPMC in 2018
1st breast milk bank to be established in SPMC in 2018
The first human breast milk bank in Mindanao at the Southern Philippines Medical Centre will be established this year. Plans for the bank were laid last year, as a result of the collaboration between Latch Davao and other sectors, with government support. Hospitals will be able to respond faster to often an urgent need for breast milk. Because of the Philippines’ unfortunate penchant for both man-made and natural disasters, milk banks address infants’ milk needs without having to worry about health risks. Formula milk donations are discouraged because they require sterile preparations and people living in many places (like Marawi City when this article was written) are not able to do so.
The concept of a human milk bank intrigued me. I had heard of blood banks, sperm and egg donor banks, even (botanical) seed banks, but I have never encountered a breast milk bank. Although this article is short, when I entered “breast milk” on the SunStar’s search engine, so many articles popped up about milk banks in the Philippines. All of them were written only within the last 5 years so the concepts of milk banks and breastfeeding are new to the country. It might be part of a modernizing campaign. This topic lies in a very modern intersection between health technologies, global health standards, and breastfeeding campaigns. Why is the Philippines health department pushing for a change to breastfeeding, when formula milk seems to be the popular choice? What sparked the slew of milk banks being set up? How does this relate to the intertwining of health and modernity? Formula milk changed the modern workplace so it was probably seen as a sign of modernity to feed it to your infant - how did the breastfeeding campaign reverse this?
Furthermore, thinking back to our readings on kinship, Janet Carsten’s article mentions breastfeeding as integral to building kinship ties. Milk banks probably wouldn’t go down well with the Malays in Langkawi since the milk is donated. Their babies would be forming kin relations with the women who donated their milk. What is the Philippino view on the function of breastfeeding? Is it as integral for constructing kinship ties?