The National Academy of Medicine (ANM) urged the national government to improve the conditions to be able to restore the activities of the lactation service of JM de los Ríos children’s hospitaldeclared in technical closure on August 1.
Through a statement shared on its website, the ANM called on the Ministry of Health to work to improve and restore the “Mi Gota de Leche” servicefollowing be cut in half the number of breastfeeding specialists.
On the eve of World Breastfeeding Week, two Mi Gota de Leche specialists were transferred to another hospital service.
According to an official letter from the Human Resources coordination of JM de los Ríos, the decision was made to comply with a program of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
This situation made it difficult to continue the work of the lactation center of the main pediatric hospital in the country.
are made available
In this context, the National Academy of Medicine also made human lactation specialists available to the health authorities to «advise and collaborate in the search for a prompt solution».
“We also recommend the creation of support services for breastfeeding in other health care institutions,” added the ANM.
The Mi Gota de Leche service has not had an adequate physical space to provide care for almost a decade, when it was evicted from its original facilities due to a remodeling that did not materialize.
He was relocated at least three times until he was left in a small laboratory without ideal conditions to receive patients or to carry out teaching tasks for pediatricians in training, a situation that worsened with the arrival of the pandemic. Due to the risk of COVID-19, the staff switched to remote mode.
In 20 years of work, the lactation service has served more than 79 thousand users including nursing mothers, infants in the breastfeeding stage, pregnant mothers and families.
await solutions
After the announcement of the technical closure of the JM de los Ríos lactation service, a 2020 National Assembly committeewho went to the hospital on August 3 and verified the state of the facilities of the lactation center.
According to the Mi Gota de Leche staff, the visit allowed verification of the “overcrowding conditions, lack of ventilation, difficulties in maintaining good hygiene and high risk” of COVID-19 infection, which prevents the reincorporation of the scarce face-to-face staff.
They also held a meeting with part of the team of Unicefwho stated that staff rotations depend exclusively on the hospital administration or its governing body.
The team reported that it is waiting for advances to solve the problems that the service has suffered for almost 10 years.
