First human breast milk bank opens in Africa

Africa’s first human milk bank opened this month, providing donated breast milk to at-risk infants on the island of Cape Verde, says a British Medical Journal report.

Brazil is sponsoring one of Africa’s first human breast milk banks to help the island of Cape Verde meet its millennium development goal on cutting the infant mortality rate.

The latest figures from the Ministry of Health show that the island’s infant mortality rate was 20.1 per 1000 in 2009, with 262 deaths in infants up to 11 months and 47 deaths in children between 1 and 4 years.

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