A growing community of breast milk donors in Uganda gives mothers hope

CAMPALA, Uganda – Early last year, Caroline Ikendi was in danger after undergoing an emergency caesarean section to remove a stillborn baby and save two others. Doctors said one of the premature babies had a 2% chance of surviving.

If the babies didn’t get breast milk – which she didn’t have – Ikendi could lose them too.

Thus began a desperate search for breast milk donors. She got lucky with a neighbor, a woman with a newborn baby to feed and who was willing to donate a few milliliters at a time.

“You go and beg for milk. You’re like, ‘Please help me, help my son,’” Ikendi told the Associated Press.

The neighbor helped until Ikendi heard about a Ugandan group that collects breast milk and donates it to mothers like her. Soon the ATTA Breast Milk Community was giving her the breast milk she needed, free of charge, until her babies were strong enough to be discharged from the hospital.

The ATTA Breast Milk Community was launched in 2021 in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, by a woman who struggled like Ikendi without getting support. The registered non-profit organization, supported by donations from organizations and individuals, is the only group outside of a hospital setting in Uganda that conserves breast milk in substantial quantities.

ATTA, as the group is known, receives requests for support from hospitals and homes with babies born too early or too sick to latch onto their mother’s breasts.

More than 200 mothers have donated breast milk to support more than 450 babies since July 2021, with more than 600 liters of milk delivered to babies in that time, according to ATTA records.

In a measure of efforts to build a trusting community, many donors gave multiple times, while others helped find new ones, said ATTA administrator Racheal Akugizibwe.

“We are an emergency solution,” said Akugizibwe. “As the mother is working on her own production, we are giving her milk. But we do this in accordance with the directive and with the support of a lactation specialist and medical staff.”

She added: “All the mothers who give us milk are kind of attached to us. They are us; we are them. That’s what makes it a community.”

ATTA makes calls to donors through social media apps like Instagram. Women who wish to donate must provide samples for testing, including for HIV and Hepatitis B and C, and there are formal conversations during which ATTA tries to learn more about potential donors and motivations. Those who pass screening are given storage bags and instructed on safe handling.

Akugizibwe spoke of ATTA’s humble beginnings in the home of its founder, Tracy Ahumuza, who stored milk in her freezer. Ahumuza started the group in the midst of personal pain: she was unable to produce breast milk for her newborn, who was battling life-threatening complications. Days later, after the baby’s death, she began breastfeeding.

She asked health workers: “Where do I put the milk I have now?” said Akugizibwe. “They told her, ‘All we can do for you is give you drying tablets.’ She’s like, ‘No, but if I needed it and couldn’t get it, someone else might need it.'”

At first, ATTA matched a donor with a recipient, but this proved unsustainable due to the pressure it put on donors. ATTA then began collecting and storing breast milk, and donors and recipients do not know each other.

Akugizibwe said the group receives more requests for support than it can respond to. Challenges include purchasing storage bags in large quantities as well as testing costs. And donors are required to own freezers, a financial hurdle for some.

“Demand is extremely, extremely high,” Akugizibwe said, “but supply is low.”

Lelah Wamala, a chef and mother of three in Kampala who has donated milk twice, said she was spurred to action when, while having a baby in 2022, she saw mothers whose premature babies were dying because they didn’t have milk.

Being a donor is a time-consuming responsibility, “but this is the right thing to do,” she said.

Using motorcycle couriers on the busy streets of Kampala, donor breast milk is taken to ATTA storage and delivered to parents in need.

ATTA’s objective is to set up a complete breast milk bank with pasteurization capacity. The service is needed in a country where an unknown number of women suffer from a lack of lactation support, said Dr. Doreen Mazakpwe, a lactation specialist who collaborates with ATTA.

Mazakpwe cited a range of lactation problems that mothers can face, from sore nipples to babies being born too sick or too weak to suck and stimulate milk production.

If both mother and baby are healthy, “this mother should be able to produce as much milk as the baby needs because we work on the principle of supply and demand,” said Mazakpwe, a consultant at a private hospital on the outskirts of Kampala. . in situations where there is a delay in putting the baby to the breast, or the baby is not fed often enough… you may eventually have a low supply problem.”

Mazakpwe said she advises mothers on how to establish their own supply about a month after receiving donated breast milk, and sometimes all that is needed is to hold the baby in the right way. When mothers begin breastfeeding, it frees up supplies for new mothers who need ATTA’s help, she said.

Akugizibwe said his work is challenging in a socially conservative society, where such a pioneering service raises eyebrows. Questions, even from recipients, include fears that babies who drink donated breast milk could inherit their benefactors’ bad habits.

Plus, “if you don’t breastfeed there’s a lot of negativity,” said Ikendi, whose premature babies survived on donated milk. “Society looks at you as if you literally refuse to breastfeed.”

She talked about hardship even when she knew she had no choice after seeing her babies in the intensive care unit for the first time. Through the glass she saw that they were very small, receiving oxygen therapy and bleeding from the nose. The babies, a boy and a girl, were removed at seven months.

Ikendi’s babies received donated breast milk for two months.

On a recent morning, an emotional Ikendi held her children as she described how the donated milk “contributed 100% to our babies’ growth.”

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