Perfil das doadoras de um banco de leite humano da Paraíba.

Abstract

Exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of life has a great importance to the newborn, bringing a lot of benefits for him, for the mother and for the whole family. However, for various circumstances, some newborns, particularly premature ones, can’t receive the milk directly from the mother. In this context, Human Milk Banks have an important role in providing the human milk, tested and pasteurized, saving countless lives. The objective of this paper was to evaluate the epidemiological profile of the donors. In the methodology, it was made an observational, retrospective, cross-sectional, descriptive study. The place of this research was the Human Milk Bank located in the Health Institute Elpidio de Almeida, in Campina Grande-PB. The sample of the study was composed by 276 donors registered between March 2018 and February 2019. In this work, it was reinforced the profile of the young, primiparous donor, more inserted in the public health system, with complete high school, good socioeconomic status, submitted to cesarean sections. Without any comparable data in the literature, it was crossed the socioeconomic and obstetric variables with the duration of the donation. It was found a bigger frequency of women who donated for more than 90 days between the ones with complete high school, teachers, housewives, multiparous, the ones who had experience with breastfeeding, accompanied by the private health system and submitted to cesarean sections. The present study showed the need of new observational and prospective studies to evaluate the seasonality of active donors and the effectiveness of the campaigns. Beyond that, it was suggested the need of further studies that explain the expressive number of women who register in the Human Milk Bank without turning into effective donors.