KARACHI: The Sindh government has expressed a firm stance to continue the newly launched Human Milk Bank project at the Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology.
The human milk bank initiative was launched to save the lives of premature babies who, owing to weakness and medical complications, cannot consume cattle, powdered, or formula milk.
A few days ago, SICHN temporarily suspended operations of its Human Milk Bank, the first-of-its-kind healthcare initiative in Pakistan following a revised fatwa issued by Darul Uloom Karachi.
During her speech at the Sindh Assembly, Health Minister Dr. Azra Fazal Pechuho said that due precautions would be taken with the Human Milk Bank project coming into operation again to prevent marriages between a foster brother and a sister in the future who shared the milk from the same mother as per the teachings of Islam.
She said such precautions included developing a proper database of the mothers donating their milk to this project. The proposed database would include the Computerised National Identity Card numbers, addresses, and other personal details of mothers who donate their milk.
Furthermore, the Health Minister told the house that the data would remain with the managers of the human milk bank project and could also be provided to Nadra so that the parents of a beneficiary baby of this project would remain informed about his or her foster family.
She said the Sindh government had approached the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), urging the CII to issue an edict in favor of the human milk project. “But why should we wait for an edict to launch an initiative duly sanctioned by Islam?” she asked.
In her speech in the house, Dr Pechuho conceded that there is a need to uplift the public healthcare facilities in the province. She clarified that the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplant and the Gambat Institute of Medical Sciences were not non-governmental organizations but autonomous health facilities.
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