NAIROBI: Surrounded by incubators, a red tube snaking into her tiny nose, four-day-old Grace-Ella is being fed donated breastmilk at the only facility in Kenya that offers the life-giving service.

The breastmilk bank at Pumwani Maternity Hospital is one of very few across sub-Saharan Africa, and is especially helpful for premature babies, of which roughly 134,000 are born each year in Kenya.

Mothers who give birth prematurely are often unable to produce breastmilk and must rely on formula, which can be less nutritious and increases the risk of infection, especially since water is often contaminated. The milk bank in Nairobi, established in 2019 with the support of British aid money and PATH, an NGO, allows babies like Grace-Ella to benefit from the generosity of others.

“It was super-exciting,” her mother Margaret Adhiambo, 28, said, adding she had not heard of the programme before she delivered prematurely at 30 weeks. “Before I accepted, I was a bit sceptical because it gave me some feeling of guilt like I could not give my daughter my own breastmilk.” But “it helped me because my daughter didn’t starve, at least she got some food,” she added.

Underweight babies face a daunting array of risks and breastmilk can, quite literally, tip the scales in their favour. “When we feed them human milk we find they are growing faster compared to a baby who is getting formula,” said Muthoni Ogola, the doctor heading the programme.

Yet the World Health Organisation (WHO) says fewer than half of all infants worldwide are exclusively breastfed. A key advantage of breastmilk is the antibodies passed to the infant, said Pumwani nurse Hannah Wangeci Maina.

She moves with the efficiency needed for a maternity ward that cares for at least 90 mothers and babies at a time. “We usually have many mothers lining up to receive the expressed breastmilk,” she said.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2025