Personal tragedy motivates this youth to plan a milk bank in Bengal

A youth has been trying to solve the problem of shortage of breast milk that contributes to high infant mortality rate in India. Want to know what exactly he wants to do? Just scroll down.

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India fares badly in infant mortality rate

India has one of the highest rates of mortality for under-five-year-olds in the world. Only 54.9 % children under the age of six months have been exclusively breastfed, according to the National Health and Family Survey (NHFS-4).

Most of the babies become underweight or fail to survive due to unavailability or shortage of breast milk.

Human milk bank is a solution

Human milk banks offer one solution to help reduce the mortality by helping premature and underweight babies to survive. But the problem is the absence of enthusiasm among governments and other stakeholders to set-up the milk banks. At the same time, mothers also do not donate the milk fearing shortage for their babies.

Personal tragedy moves the youth to start Mumma Bear

A 20-year-old youth in Kolkata realized the first-hand importance of the breast milk when he suffered a personal tragedy.

His cousin sister passed away due to non-availability of breast milk, a year ago, “She was a premature baby and was having complications. She was not able to get breast milk from her mother. We tried to arrange milk but failed. She passed away within a few days of her birth in the hospital. The incident left me shattered. I took a vow that similar incident should not happen with other children and decided to start a milk bank for babies,” said Saptarshi Bhattacharya, the founder of Mumma Bear, to Chalgenius.

Huge shortage of breast milk

Saptarshi who is also the third year student of JD Birla Institute department of management affiliated by Jadavpur University says that he did a research on breast milk and found that there is a severe short of milk from lactating mothers in India, “I found the problem is huge and needs a solution . I decided to start a milk bank that would sort out the issue of milk shortage so that children do not remain underweight,” he told Chalgenius.

Excess milk to be collected from lactating mothers

Annesha Datta, partner of Mumma Bear told Chalgenius that the milk would be then brought to the central processing unit where it would be pasteurised, tested, stored in freezers and fed to babies in need as per requirement. The milk would be packed in recyclable bottles.

Home delivery of breast milk

Saptarshi says that the milk would be available in different hospitals across the state where it would be fed to the newborn babies, “Besides, we also want to have subscription models where people can fix the quantity of milk required daily for children in households. We would give home deliveries.” He is looking for investors to start his project.

Get in touch!

Saptarshi Bhattacharya
Founder, Mumma Bear
8585820418

Follow Saptarshi Bhattacharya on Facebook

Keywords: Mumma Bear, Jadavpur University, JD Birla Institute department of management, Chagenius, Milk bank.

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