Assam woman donates breast milk: Ronita Krishna Sharma Rekhi, a lactating mother in Guwahati, is donating breast milk to infants whose mothers are either COVID-19 survivors who can't feed the child as they are still in isolation due to the disease or those who have lost their battles to the deadly virus. Rekhi is a Mumbai-based celebrity and production manager, who is now living in her hometown in Guwahati with her two-month-old daughter.
She had earlier reached out to people in need of breast milk for their infants after the current crisis of the second wave hit the country in late April.
Assam woman donates breast milk: Rekhi tweeted on May 4 informing that if any newborn needs breast milk in Guwahati she was willing donate to the babies separated from mothers.
Recently, actor Richa Chadha Instagrammed a post sharing how the new mother felt the need of doing her part as a lactating mother when she saw an SOS request on social media earlier this month. There was a request for mother’s milk for a newborn who lost his mother to COVID-19 in Delhi and, in that moment, as she nursed her own two-month-old baby, Rekhi came up with an innovative idea to help out people in her city as well. A message of hope and support arrived in the form of a mother's care as she put out a message on her social media announcing that if anyone newborn baby needed it in Guwahati she would be happy to donate her breast milk.
"Having given birth herself this March to a baby girl, Ronita was aware that she would be lactating for another six months. So she offered to breastfeed babies who’d been rendered motherless due to the disease or those who's mothers were in quarantine," Chadha shared Rekhi's inspiring story. Many infants have been forcibly separated from their mothers owing to the prevailing situation in India. According to an NDTV report, no requests have come through yet, but Rekhi has been amplifying her message on various social media platforms while taking care of her own child, Alaya Mohsin Rekhi.
She also said she has received tremendous encouragement from her husband Mohsin Rekhi who along with her own brother convinced her not to decline media requests for interview so that more people become aware of her service. She told The Assam Tribune, "In my heart, I would never want this situation, but since this is upon us, we have to pitch in every way we can."
Rekhi has urged other lactating mothers to also contribute to the cause. She claimed to have been seeing a lot of similar instances since the pandemic began. The first human milk bank in Northeast India was inaugurated in a Guwahati hospital late last year. It was the fifteenth human milk bank in India, has the capacity to store pasteurised human milk for up to six years. Read what is a Human Milk Bank here.
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