In DRC, documenting plants associated with breastfeeding - StimLactationPlants DRC Project - TSARA research network

In south-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Université Nouveaux Horizons in Lubumbashi and the Pathophysiology of Nutritional Adaptations Joint INRAE/Nantes University Research Unit (PhAN), are collaborating to document breastfeeding practices during the first months. Initial surveys were conducted with 65 mothers in healthcare facilities. “While 81% of mothers breastfeed when their baby is born—which is very high—almost two out of three were slow to start breastfeeding,” says Francisca Ngenda Kabombo, a PhD student at PhAN. These findings highlight “the need to support mothers in healthcare facilities and to train healthcare staff, both in breastfeeding practices and in maternal nutrition.”

The StimLactationPlants DRC project also focuses on galactagogue plants, traditionally used to stimulate milk production. In the DRC, these plants remain “very poorly documented from an ethnobotanical, pharmacological and clinical perspective, despite the richness of Congolese plant biodiversity and the importance of traditional knowledge in maternal and neonatal health,” notes Clair-Yves Boquien, a researcher at PhAN and co-supervisor of the thesis.

Surveys conducted among mothers, as well as among practitioners of traditional medicine—using medicinal plants, rituals or local cultural practices—set out to identify these plants and how they are prepared and administered. The project then plans to extract and characterize the compounds likely to affect lactation, before testing their effects in preclinical models. In the longer term, the teams also hope to contribute to setting up a human milk bank in Lubumbashi, to meet the breastmilk needs of premature infants.

StimLactationPlantesRDC 

• Francisca Ngenda Kabombo, (PhD student, Nantes Université - INRAE PhAN and Université Nouveaux Horizons, Lubumbashi); 
• Khadija Ouguerram (Nantes Université - INRAE PhAN); 
• Clair-Yves Boquien (PhD supervisor, Nantes Université - INRAE PhAN); 
• Paul MOBINZO (PhD co-supervisor, Dean of FSAE, Université Nouveaux Horizons, Lubumbashi, RDC). 
• CIRAD participation: Charles DOUMENGE (eco-botanist) and Laurence BOUTINOT (ethnologist).