'Sathu maavu' to boost new moms at government hospitals

CHENNAI: The

young mothers

peered into the casserole the nurse held, each looking for the biggest ball of '

sathu maavu

'. As they devoured the brown dumplings, some anxiously looked toward the neonatal intensive care unit where 12 babies lay immured in glass boxes. The women needed the nutrition, not just to nurse their own infants battling for life in that room but also those they had volunteered to feed.

After distributing `sathu maavu' to children,

pregnant women

and lactating mothers in anganwadi centres, the

Integrated Child Development Services

is now providing the nutrient-dense complementary food to mothers of pre-term or sick infants who are in government hospitals for up to two months.

The project was started on a pilot basis in the neonatal ward at Institute of Child Health, Egmore, in November.Over six months, doctors studied the impact on the young mothers who had previously struggled to lactate due to stress and poor nutrition.

Dr S Srinivasan, state coordinator for the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), said there was a two-fold increase in the number of donations to the breast milk bank at the hospi tal from 2015 to 2016, with the largest contribution in December 2016. “The reason is twopronged: effective counselling and the high-protein diet provided by the nutritious powder,“ said Dr Srinivasan.

At least 80% of the women attending to their babies in the NICU are from Tiruttani, Villupuram, Nellore and the suburbs of Chennai. Doctors say most of these women depend on food bought outside. “The food is not nutritious enough,“ said Dr C N Kamalarathnam, the head of the department of neonatology . Pre-term babies require high protein diets.

“For a full term baby, the requirement of the nutrient is 0.9g-1.1g per 100 ml of milk. For premature babies, it can go up to 300g,“ explained Dr C N Kamalarathnam, the head of the department of neonatology.

Dr Srinivasan said the idea of supplementing their diet with `sathu maavu' came from a postgraduate student. “We called ICDS officials, who immediately agreed to provide ingredients and train our staff on how to cook it,“ he said.

`Sathu maavu' is made with roasted cereals, gram, jaggery and a vitamin premix based on a prescribed protein-calorie scale. Dr Srinivasan said the project could be scaled up to the seven other state-run breast milk banks.

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