Popular Education in Health: human milk donation in a community in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This paper presents an experience related to Popular Education in Health, focused on promoting donation of breast milk. Its main objective is to describe the experience of promoting breastfeeding with nursing mothers, aiming at breast milk donation at a Primary Care Unit located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It reports the entire process: the training offered to the Unit’s professionals, the educational groups held with the nursing mothers, the selection of donors, and the collection, preservation, and transportation of donated breast milk to the Human Milk Bank. The whole process respected the guiding principles of popular education in health, such as lovingness and respect for the donors’ knowledge. Thus, it was possible to perceive that the stronger the bond between nursing mothers and the Unit’s professionals, the higher the number of breast milk donors and the amount of donated milk.

Human milk; Breastfeeding; Health Education