Divar’s daughter wants to work to improve children education in her ancestral village
Padmavati Prabhu
Panaji : It is important to encourage new mothers to exclusively breastfeed their babies, as breast milk is rich in growth, immunological, and infection-fighting factors that can prevent newborns from infections, says Goan-origin neonatologist Dr Armida Fernandes (82) who will be conferred Padma Shri for her work in the field of medicine.
Dr Armida established Asia’s first human milk bank in 1989 at Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion, where she retired as the dean.
“We found that if you exclusively breastfeed your babies, chances of infection and allergy later are lesser and hence it is most important to encourage mothers to exclusively breastfeed their babies. Breast milk is ‘Amrut’ because it has growth factors, immunological factors and infection fighting factors, and it also prevents the risk of breast cancer and other problems in the mothers,” says Dr Armida.
Born in Dharwad, Dr Armida completed MBBS from Hubballi and postgraduation from KEM Hospital, Mumbai.
Her parents Armando Menezes, who was a professor of English Literature, and Matilda were originally from Sao Mathias, Divar. Her husband Rui Fernandes was a renowned dermatologist.
“Though I am working in the health sector, my husband wanted me to work for the betterment of the youth in Divar. I wish to work with the schools, to improve the education for children there mainly at the high school level and work towards their skill building and employability,” she says.
Stating that human milk banks are very important in a country like India to reduce infant mortality, she says that these banks are needed in hospitals that have neonatal intensive care units where sick and preterm babies are kept.
“Here you can safely pasteurise and store it. There is enough research to show that if you even give a few drops of breast milk to a baby, which is very preterm or sick and even on the ventilator, it works on the intestines, works on growth factors and certain diseases and the problems leading to the mortality are prevented. This results in reduction in infections and the survival of the babies is better,” the neonatologist says.
“When I was at the Sion hospital, a municipal hospital, we catered to the poorest and the sickest babies. The mortality was high. I worked very hard in the first few years to bring down the neonatal mortality. Of course, mortality reduced, but then I realised some babies could not be saved because the mothers came in late and secondly the babies were brought in late,” she said.
That’s where the Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health Action (SNEHA), a non-profit organisation was born in 1999.
“I realised that sitting in a hospital alone, neonatal mortality cannot be reduced. You must go into the community, work with the mothers and educate them on registering early, going for regular checks, etc. So the focus was on educating mothers, changing their behaviour and then reducing mortality,” she says, adding that maternal and newborn health was the first big project.
“The next focus was on malnutrition among children in slums. The third thing is violence against women. SNEHA mainly works on maternal and newborn health, child health, nutrition, adolescent health, and violence against women. We currently have more than 700 volunteers who are actually from the slums,” says Dr Armida.
