KARACHI, July 12, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - A hospital that launched the first

breast milk bank for premature babies in Pakistan is negotiating for it to be
reopened after clerics deemed it un-Islamic, doctors and the national Islamic
council said Friday.

The milk bank in the megacity of Karachi received religious approval in
December from a provincial Islamic seminary, but that approval was withdrawn
almost as soon as the facility opened in June, forcing it to shut.

"Breast milk is the only way to improve the chances of the survival of
premature babies," said Jamal Raza, a doctor and the executive director of
the Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology hospital, where the bank
was set up.

"People have no idea what this is about. Only premature babies were going to
be given this milk," Raza added.

The facility was intended to help premature babies survive in a country where
the neonatal mortality rate is 39 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to
the UN children's agency -- one of the highest in South Asia.

A religious edict, or fatwa, approving the facility was issued in December
2023 by Jamia Darul Uloom, an Islamic advisory body in the province.

However, the government's national Council of Islamic Ideology later
questioned whether it risked breaking Islamic codes on kinship, which dictate
that husband and wife cannot be breastfed by the same woman.

"The child's family must know who the donors are to not complicate the issue
of future marriages between such families," the head of research at the
council, Inamullah, who goes by one name, told AFP

"We are confident that the outcome will be favourable."