The first donor breast milk bank in the region has officially opened at the Batumi Iashvili Maternal and Child Central Hospital. The project, which has been in development since 2018, will provide pasteurized donor milk, when necessary, to premature and high-risk newborns born in the Adjara region. The Georgian milk bank has already become a member of the European Milk Bank Association (EMBA).
“Today, the first donor breast milk bank in the region has officially opened. We are the first not only in Georgia but in the entire region. The doctors of the Iashvili Clinic—myself and Ms. Eka Kandelak—have been working on this project since 2018. Later, when it was decided to propose this initiative for the Adjara region, Ms. Tamar Bakhtadze joined us. Today, it has finally become possible to provide pasteurized donor milk to premature and high-risk newborns born in Adjara whenever it is needed.
Our future plans, of course, are ambitious. We are members of the European Milk Bank Association, and our bank is already marked on their official map. We cooperate very closely with the Association’s experts, who have visited us in Georgia multiple times. Just recently, a week ago, we saw off a member of their board, Ms. Aleksandra Wasilewska, who highly evaluated our bank and its protocols. In the future, we plan to implement a similar project in Eastern Georgia as well. The country does not need many such banks—to fully cover the whole of Georgia, a minimum of two and a maximum of three centers are required. Consequently, in the future, we will definitely launch this project in Tbilisi too, on the premises of the Iashvili Clinic,” noted Nino Solomonia, pediatrician-neonatologist and Head of the Neonatal Intensive Care Department at the Tbilisi Iashvili Clinic, in an interview with Medscriptum.
