The first human milk bank in the country was inaugurated on Friday at Al-Zahra Hospital in Tabriz, East Azarbaijan Province, in the presence of high-ranking officials. “The optimum nutrition for newborns comes from breastfeeding; infant formula can never be an alternative to mother’s milk which is the best nutrition for the healthy growth of infants,” said Mohammad Hussein Sowmi, head of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, ISNA reported. A human milk bank, or breast milk bank, is a service which collects, screens, processes, and dispenses by prescription human milk donated by nursing mothers who are not biologically related to the recipient infant. “Such banks offer a solution to mothers who cannot supply their own breast milk to their child, for reasons such as a baby being at risk of getting diseases and infections from a mother with specific diseases, or when it cannot digest its own mother’s milk,” Sowmi explained.
