Baby&Me
An incentive for breastfeeding women
Table of Contents
About The Project
Through this project we aim to solve 3 major problems faced by breastfeeding women:
What We Aim To Achieve:
- To provide necessary infrastructure which are private, safe and clean, for mothers to breastfeed their infants in public places.
- To increase awareness with regards to donation of breastmilk and it’s subsequent use as donated breast milk for little ones.
- To aid in donation of breastmilk to Comprehensive Lactation Management Centres with the help of National Health Mission guidelines.
Problems And Solutions:
Problem 1:
Nearly one lakh children die every year in India due to diseases that could have been prevented through breastfeeding, according to a United Nations report. Breastfeeding not only helps prevent diarrhoea and pneumonia, two major causes of death in infants, it also helps reduce mothers’ risk of ovarian and breast cancer, two leading causes of death among women.
Even though the benefits of breastfeeding are well advertised through government programs, there is a lack of places where one can breastfeed their child in India.
https://www.epw.in/engage/article/no-room-breastfeeding-mothers-india
Around 81% mothers said that they were not comfortable feeding their children in public due to the lack of proper breastfeeding places.
Due to these limitations when a mother leaves her house with her child, she is likely to give the child “solution milk”, and if she cannot after that, the child usually stays hungry till the mother reaches home.
Solution 1:
If we can solve the problem of working spaces by the concept of coworking areas why can't we solve the problem of women not having a place to breastfeed their babies by creating a network of safe crowdsourced breastfeeding spots.
Right Now, Women have fed their babies in their own car (90%), public transport (78%), restaurants (56%), car parking (49%), trial rooms (47%), washrooms (44%), religious places (41%), parks (32%) and only 6% use breastfeeding rooms (mainly due to unavailability).
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/only-6-mothers-in-india-are-okay-with-public-breastfeeding-places-says-survey/article29037650.ece
There are 500 mn active Internet users, 21% more women are online now -May 2020.
And 26 million new female Internet users were added in November 2019.
https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/india-now-over-500-mn-active-internet-users-21-more-women-are-online-now-iamai-story-zKfSAWrXyA2WvzyRJFEzDI.html
We have created a crowdsourced platform which is targeted towards working India, where businesses, malls, shopping centres, cinema halls, bus terminals, railway and metro stations, airports and offices, can list clean hygienic rooms available with them as breastfeeding room, so that women can leave their house without worrying about where they can feed their baby.
Our platform is supported by a Peer-to-peer comment and review system, which helps users identify the authenticity or usability of a particular breastfeeding place.
Problem 2:
Women exploring the possibility of breast milk donation or use of donor breast milk, have questions in their minds with regards to the process of procurement and subsequent handling. Fears range from storage guidelines methods being lax and ambiguous, to distribution being beyond the milk’s true shelf life. Lack of awareness of donation of breast milk is rural & urban India is the main reason even after the first breast milk bank of Asia was set up in India (Mumbai) on November 27, 1989. Thirty years from then, the subject of breast milk donation and use of donor’s milk are still deemed as unknown and lesser understood practices.
https://indianexpress.com/article/parenting/blog/breast-milk-donation-myths-fears-and-who-can-donate-7103453/#:~:text=Having%20the%20highest%20number%20of,the%20rate%20of%20infant%20mortality.
Solution 2:
The primary solution to this problem is ‘raising awareness’.
Raising awareness can be done in multiple forms.
Hosting Educational Events- By letting women attend free educational meetups to teach them about breast milk donation and other related topics and getting them to clear their doubts and myths is the most effective solution. In recent days the growth of Women Empowerment Volunteers have been increasing, a proper management between the volunteers and the guideline committee can help to spread the awareness.
Incorporating these topics in our day to day conversation can help in spreading of awareness too.
Another primary method of raising awareness is to advertise on televisions,websites and other platforms.
Problem 3:
Under the , National Guidelines on Lactation Management Centres in Public Health Facilities https://nhm.gov.in/images/pdf/programmes/IYCF/National_Guidelines_Lactation_Management_Centres.pdf set up by the government, it plans to have Lactation Management Units in all Medical colleges, Large District Hospitals, District hospitals, Sub District Hospitals.
Solution 3:
On our Platform we have created a centralised database where these lactation managements can register ,and handle donation/screening requests. Our Platform also has the data of milk bottles available at each center which can be updated through the Unit’s admin portal.
Built With
Getting Started
To get a local copy up and running follow these simple example steps:
Prerequisites
- npm
npm install npm@latest -g
Installation
-
Get API keys for GoogleMapsAPI, SendgridAPI, MONGODB
-
Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/Deb77/BabyAndMe.git
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Make a .env file in the backend which has the same keys as the .env example file Make a file "MAP_KEY.js" in this directory client/src/Components/Utils add and export the follwing variable:
export const GOOGLE_API_KEY= '';
-
Installing and running the frontend
cd client npm install npm start -
Installing and running the backend
cd backend virtualenv venv for Windows: source venv/Scripts/activate for Linux: source venv/bin/activate pip install -r requirements.txt python app.py
Usage
The working parts are as follows:
- The landing page:
- An about page which features our problem statements and the solutions we've implemented
- A crowdsourced page to help women locate comfortable and cosy places to breastfeed their babies
- A page which lists down Lactation Management Centers with an aim to create a globalised database,
which displays infomation like number of bottles available in the center and other necessary details.
Users can also send requests to hospitals inorder to get screened to be eligible to donate milk.
- An admin panel which enables the Lactation Management Center to update the number of milk bottles available,
and enables the admin user to approve screening requests.
Contributing
Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to be learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.
- Fork the Project
- Create your Feature Branch (
git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature) - Commit your Changes (
git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature') - Push to the Branch (
git push origin feature/AmazingFeature) - Open a Pull Request
License
Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.