Green corridor helps transport 18 litres of mother’s milk from Bhilwara to Ajmer
A refrigerated van carrying 18 litres of mother’s milk travelled from Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district to Ajmer, covering 150 km in two hours. Lives of at least seven newborns at Zenana Hospital in Ajmer were dependant on this consignment.
On Thursday, the infants were fed the milk, donated by lactating mothers from across the state.
It normally takes four hours to reach Ajmer from Bhilwara.
It was for the first time that a green corridor, usually created for swift transportation of organs for transplantation, was created for transporting mother’s milk. The corridor was created on Wednesday.
“Traffic police was deployed to provide zero traffic interference to the milk van. Necessary clearance from toll plaza was taken to avoid delays. A police vehicle escorted the milk van. We monitored the transportation through GPS technology,” Additional collector, Bhilwara, Anandilal Vaishnav said.
A temperature of minus 20 degree Celsius was maintained inside the van.
Devendra Agarwal, adviser to the state health department for Aanchal, the mother’s milk bank project, said the government was serious about bringing down the neonatal mortality rate.
“Transporting mother’s milk to a new storage centre created at Zenana Hospital was a step towards it. We chose to transport milk from Bhilwara, which had surplus units,” Agarwal said.
The Bhilwara milk bank had stock of 1,503 units (one unit is 30ml) from where 600 units were transported to storage unit at Zenana Hopital. It has the capacity to stock another 100 units. The Rajasthan Medical Relief Society is bearing the cost of maintaining and running the unit that was inaugurated Thursday.
Officials said the facility will help bring down the mortality rate of newborns by 16 to 20 per cent.
“The mother’s milk is very essential for newborns as it improves their immunity and helps them fight the diseases, which they often acquire at the time of birth,” said Kanti Yadav, superintendent, Zenana Hospital.