Toughen babies, feed them donkey's milk!

Toughen babies, feed them donkey's milk!
UNITED NEWS OF INDIA

CHENNAI, JAN 28: Chennai may be "tradition-bound" compared to other metros of the country, but it does have some people doing unconventional things. Like feeding babies with donkey's milk.

A section of its population, including the educated, believes that a specific quantity of donkey's milk will keep their infant immune to some illnesses. Equally strangely, they also think that it would give a "wash" down the baby's throat so as to bless him or her with a good voice.

One can see a milk-vendor selling donkey's milk in Royapuram in north Chennai and Saidapet in south Chennai. It is quite a sight to see them milching a donkey.

A vendor near Raja Sir Ramasamy Mudalayar Hospital in Royapuram, has been into the donkey milk business for years now along with cow's milk.

He first used to fetch it from his house where he used to have a donkey. Quite unlike some other milk sellers, who procure it from other vendors and sell it in front of other government and private hospitals.

The donkey milk is sold at a price ranging from Rs 50 to Rs 100 per about 10 milligrams.

The belief is that an infant fed with about 10 ml of donkey's milk every alternate day for three days, can be cured of the `blue baby' condition, according to Dr S Gopaul, director, superintendent of Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children at Egmore in central Chennai.

This is one of the hospitals in front of which donkey's milk can be obtained from a milk vendor.

The milk is fed after pouring it in a spoon which is first heated to minimum temperature.

Dr Gopaul says donkey's milk may be beneficial as per some other systems of medicine. But scientifically, there is no proof of the reasons for which infants are fed with it.

He says in fact, the proteins present in donkey's milk are not acceptable to the human digestive system. Besides, it is also unhygienic.

However, Dr Gopaul says in these modern times, the practice of feeding infants with donkey's milk or any other animal except cow, for that matter, is very rare.

May be some people, who still subscribe to this belief handed down from generations, are resorting to the practice, he felt.

In the days of yore, the belief of curative properties of donkey's milk may also have originated out of necessity in regions where cow's milk was not not available, he says.