How paladai found its way to Philadelphia

Dr Vinod Bhutani is very enthusiastic about his latest venture at work, the paladai. By using the South Indian feeding cup, the paladai, he helps at least 300 mothers at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia give their own milk to their babies.

"This a kind of low technology transfer," explains Dr Bhutani. Recently several newspapers have written about his experiment.

"I can't honestly take credit for the idea," he says. He was nevertheless responsible for bringing the device to the US. "The credit goes to the great pediatricians in Chennai."

In Southern India, the paladai has been used for many centuries to feed babies. The picture Dr Bhutani describes is of a group of women sitting in a room, expressing their milk and feeding their babies. "Watching those really small-weighted babies feeding in their paladais was mind-boggling," he recalls.

Though his studies have shown that paladais are effective, there is a problem in training parents to use the device.

"In India, women express their milk watching their mothers and sisters do it. Here, women use pumps" and it constitutes a "major lifestyle change," he explains.

Currently, five area hospitals in Philadelphia offer parents the option of paladais and Dr Bhutani is confident, based on the trial's initial success, that the practice will prove successful.

To date, some 40 to 45 couples have been successfully trained in using the device. The response from physicians and parents alike has been respectful and positive, says Dr Bhutani. In fact, he adds with a laugh, most of them ask, "Why didn't we bring it here sooner?"

Are there other things Western medicine can learn from traditional Indian practices? "I think we have many, many things to learn from India," says Dr Bhutani. "The paladai is just one of them."