Original post- Facebook- Dr Ashok kapse

A crying mother brought an 18 days old baby with swelling in both breasts. Child had high fever, was unable to feed. When I examined, I found child had developed abscesses in both breasts. Child needed immediate hospitalization.

Why should child of this age develop abscess?

Many babies are born with little prominent nodular breast; mother’s hormonal changes occurring during pregnancy is the cause for such breast prominence. These swelling need no treatment or intervention and disappear over a period of time.

Traditionally all families employ a “DAYAN” for giving bath to new born baby. These old illiterate ladies have lot of wrong concepts about child health; unfortunately these ladies are the first and important health councilor for family.

One of the mistaken concepts is that, this breast nodule contains milk which is harmful and hence should be removed. Unfortunately unlike mother baby’s breast does not have any pores and hence there is no way milk can come out. To extract the milk “” forcibly squeeze the breast, in the bargain, they rupture child’s soft breast skin.
Majority of these ladies are poor in hygiene. They do not wash hands with soap or anti septic lotions before touching babies; If any child has skin infection that is carried to all those children whom these ladies bath and do “Malish”.

In the name of foolish practice of milk extraction this unfortunate baby developed abscess in both breasts. He needed surgical cut to drain out pus and had to stay in hospital for one week.
Unfortunately this foolish practice is pretty common and because of it many innocent babies suffer grievous consequences.
It is high time we should throw away such harmful concepts.