The project ‘Implementation of the first Human Milk Bank in Peru’ has been awarded by Sociedad de Industrias Peruanas with the prize to the best project management in the category of public sector within the Quality Week 2012. This initiative has been supported by the Office of the Vice-Principal’s Programa 0,7 Una Nau de Solidaritat.
The Human Milk Bank was implemented in 2010 at the Instituto Nacional Materno Perinatal in Lima. This place was chosen because is has the highest maternity rates in Lima, the third in Latin America, and it has been named Hospital Amigo de la Madre y el Niño by Organización Panamericana de la Salud and UNICEF. The bank’s implementation has had the cooperation of Universitat de València thanks to the second edition of the programme 0,7 Una Nau de Solidaritat, which belongs to the Office of the Vice-Principal for International Relations and Cooperation.
The project has been led by doctor José Miguel Soriano del Castillo, who runs the UV’s Observatorio de Nutrición y Seguridad Alimentaria para el Mundo en Desarrollo. ‘This project is a move forward for Peruvian society, its families, life conditions, and it tries to reduce mortality among new born babies’, he has stated.
Nowadays, the project implementation has a very powerful and multidisciplinary team that is getting good results. New born hospitalizations have been reduced from 36 to 13 and individual expenses from 17,000 Euros to 6,000.
Thanks to the creation of the Human Milk Bank, the recollection of human milk has been increased and the problems of the new born babies who are hospitalized at the intensive care units have been reduced since they are only fed with real human milk.
This milk bank’s success and viability is due to its intitutional nature, though it has the active participation of Universitat de València and Fundación Oswaldo Cruz. It also has a local technical regulation which falls under the budget of the Instituto Nacional Materno Perinatal and is planned for four regions in the country: Loreto, Huancayo, Arequipa, and Trujillo. This way, it is intended to create a national network of human milk banks.
The awards
The award to the management of improvement projects is being awarded from 1991 to all the public and private institutions which wish to take part with an innovative project contributing to Peruvian cohesion through quality tools, productivity, or competitiveness.
This award honored the milk bank because is the first in Peru. The bank was created with the aim of improving the nutrition of new born children who suffer severe diseases, since their best medicine is early feeding with human milk.
Last update: 25 de october de 2012 11:52.
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