“A hospital that initiated the first breast milk bank for impulsive babies is negotiating for it to be reopened after clerics deemed it un-Islamic,” doctors and the Islamic council claimed on Friday.
The milk bank in Karachi acquired religious endorsement in December from a Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi, but that endorsement was canceled almost as early as the establishment opened in June, forcing it to cease.
“Breast milk is the only way to improve the chances of the survival of premature babies,” claimed Jamal Raza, a doctor and the executive director of the Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN) hospital, where the bank was initiated.
“People have no idea what this is about. Only premature babies were going to be given this milk,” Raza counted.
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“The establishment was proposed to aid premature babies outlive in a country where the neonatal mortality rate is 39 deaths per 1,000 live births,” as per the UN Children’s Agency — one of the highest in South Asia.
A fatwa authorizing the establishment was ordered in December 2023 by Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi.
Moreover, the Council of Islamic Ideology later doubted if it threatened to disobey religious codes on kinship, which mention that “husband and wife cannot be breastfed by the same woman.”
“The child’s family must know who the donors are to not complicate the issue of future marriages between such families,” the head of research at the council Inamullah divulged to AFP News.
“We are confident that the outcome will be favorable,” Inamullah claimed.
Published in Dawn News
