Knowledge of antenatal mothers regarding human milk banking

Abstract

Introduction: Background: Breast milk is the perfect food and uniquely superior to, artificial baby milk. Giving a child breast milk from another woman is not a newer concept; wet nursing was a fairly common practice a few decades ago. Human milk banks are services which collect, screen, process and distribute donated breast milk. Current research evidences suggest that pasteurized donor human milk can provide many of the components and eliminate the risk of transmission of infectious agents. Method: Quantitative research approach was adopted to assess the knowledge on Human Milk Banking; a structured knowledge questionnaire was given to100 antenatal mothers. The study was conducted at Justice K.S Hegde charitable Hospital. Descriptive survey design was adopted to accomplish the objectives. Results: Findings revealed that 52% of mothers had good knowledge and remaining mothers had an average knowledge. The ‘p’ value of age with regards to knowledge on human milk banking is 0.099, whereas the ‘p’ value of parity is 0.718. Meanwhile the ‘p’ value of family is 0.213 and that of religion is 0.428. For education, occupation, income and any previous exposure with human milk banking the ‘p’ values were 0.284, 0.082, 0.104 and 0.750 respectively. The above results shows that for all the demographic characteristics, the ‘p’ value is >0.05. Hence it was found that there was no significant association between knowledge of antenatal mothers with selected demographic variables. Conclusion: Providing knowledge to antenatal mothers on human milk banking serve as an investment for the future needs. The nurse practitioner has a primary responsibility of enhancing the knowledge and developing positive attitude, towards utilization of human milk banking.