Kenya Has One Human Milk Bank, and the Plan for a Second Has Stalled
In summary: The human milk bank at Pumwani Maternity Hospital opened in 2019 and is still the only one in the country. Sites for a second had been assessed and Mbagathi chosen before the funding was withdrawn. This year’s World Breastfeeding Week theme asks countries to strengthen what works.
Kenya’s first human milk bank opened at Pumwani Maternity Hospital in Nairobi in 2019, the first in East Africa. It was developed by the Ministry of Health with PATH and the African Population and Health Research Centre, in a process that began in 2016.
Mothers with more milk than their own babies need express into private booths at the bank. The milk is pasteurised at 60.5 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes, cooled, packaged and stored, and can be kept for six months.
It goes mainly to premature, low birth weight and sick newborns whose mothers cannot breastfeed. Donor milk protects those infants against necrotising enterocolitis, a condition in which bacteria invade the bowel wall, and supports central nervous system development. The alternative for these babies is formula.
The need at Pumwani alone is substantial. The hospital records about 1,600 deliveries a month and admits roughly 330 babies to its neonatal unit, many of them premature or of low birth weight.
Acceptability was tested before the bank was built, and the results were better than the planners expected. About 90 per cent of those surveyed were positive about the idea, 80 per cent said they would donate, and about 60 per cent said they would allow their own child to be fed donated milk.
Expansion was planned. The Ministry of Health carried out baseline assessments at Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital, Mbagathi Hospital and Kenyatta National Hospital, and identified Mbagathi as the preferred site for the next facility. The funding was then withdrawn, and the second bank has not been built.
That leaves one milk bank for the whole country. Every other newborn unit in Kenya, including those in the national and county referral hospitals, manages without donor milk.
The theme of World Breastfeeding Week 2026 is “Breastfeeding for a Sustainable Start in Life: Strengthen What Works.” Pumwani is a working facility with published acceptability data behind it, seven years of operation.
