MANILA – Singapore’s KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) will leverage its own seven-year experience running a breast milk donation depot with 24-hour access, to build up an existing breast milk bank for the city of Taguig in Manila.
It is one of the initiatives in a memorandum of understanding signed on Aug 16 between Taguig City and SingHealth Duke-NUS Maternal and Child Health Research Institute (MHRCI), led by KKH.
The agreement, which also involves philantropic organisation Temasek Foundation, includes infrastructure planning and capacity building in Taguig’s maternal and child health facilities, as well as nutrition research and the development of health programmes tailored to the needs of the city which has a population of over 1.2 million.
The MOU was one of two pacts signed on the day, with the second being a partnership between Taguig City’s government, private health technology firm CareSpan Asia, and Temasek Foundation which provided a S$2.12 million injection of funds.
The pilot programme will see CareSpan providing the city government access to its advanced care platform, which is composed of an electronic medical records system and telemedicine capabilities.
This is expected to benefit 350,000 underserved citizens, and will streamline the filing of Philippine Health Insurance claims for patients in the city, among other things.
Both signings took place on the sidelines of President Tharman Shanmugaratnam’s three-day state visit to the Philippines. They were witnessed by Singapore’s Minister of Health Ong Ye Kung and Taguig City mayor Lani Cayetano at the Grand Hyatt Manila.
As part of work on the maternal and child healthcare pact, a team of experts from KKH and MCHRI have joined a symposium on the topic, and assessed local facilities earlier in the week.
Taguig’s human milk bank, first established in 2010, is where breastfeeding mothers can donate breast milk to be given to babies in need in the Taguig Pateros District Hospital. KKH has its own milk bank, established in 2017, to help new mothers who cannot produce milk for their babies.
MCHRI deputy director Professor Fabian Yap noted that proper nutrition is the foundation of good health and that “breast milk is the gold standard for infant nutrition”.
“However, not all mothers are able to breastfeed, and not all infants have access to the nutrition that they need to thrive…To address this, we will focus on enhancing (Taguig’s) milk bank ecosystem,” Prof Yap said at the signing ceremony.
“We want to collaborate and lead in nutrition and milk banking – areas that are essential to the health and well being of both mothers and their children.”
He added that this not only involves collecting and storing human milk, but also “providing potentially customised donor milk, tailored to the specific age and growth needs of individuals”.
To further enhance the milk bank ecosystem, KKH will partner with Temasek Foundation to set up a best-in-class freezer locker system, that will allow for the safe an efficient storage and distribution of breast milk.
“The system will ensure that donor milk is available when and where it is needed, helping to bridge the gap for infants who would otherwise go without,” said Prof Yap.