Breast milk is essential for an infant to grow but, sadly in India, numerous babies die owing to a lack of it. And Tamil Nadu women have taken a pledge to put a stop to this problem. When Baby Shree Karan donated 20 ml of breast milk for a premature baby, the news of the little one’s improving health elated her. And that’s when the lactation counsellor thought of something.

Today Baby Shree Karan along with her friends, Koushalya Jagadeesh, and Ramyaa Sankaranarayanan is making a huge difference. The three of them run milk donation camps at Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Institute of Child Health. The camps are organized on every Sunday as reported by The Indian Express.

Baby and her friends have created a Facebook Page, Mommy Talks and 2000 Tamil Nadu mothers are a part of it. She says one litre of milk gets collected if 10 moms come at the ICH to donate.

Sometimes it may get difficult for the lactating mother to go directly to the hospital in order to donate breast milk. And to deal with such problems, they send volunteers to their houses to collect the milk.

In a conversation with Indian Express, Dr C N Kamalarathnam explained the criteria of selecting the lactating mothers: “We prefer mothers who have given birth three to six months before donating as they would have been screened for all infectious diseases, including HIV, before delivery. If it has been over six months, we screen the donors.”

Dr Kamalarathnam even stated that despite all the efforts that are putting in, they only get to collect 1200 ml of milk per day wherein an average of 1500 to 1800 ml is needed.

There won’t be a dearth of breast milk in our country if every citizen starts going in the direction where these women are heading. Each city must come up with such camps to change the scenario.