SAUDE E NUTRIC?O DE CANDIDATAS A DOAC?O DE LEITE HUMANO

This article aims to characterize the health and nutritional profile of candidates for donation of human milk, in order to support the planning of future actions of health managers and enable specific interventions. This is a retrospective study of secondary data, developed with candidates for donation of human milk registered at a milk bank in Belo Horizonte (MG) between 2008 and 2011. From 1284 candidate registration forms, demographic, health and nutritional data were obtained and analyzed. Out of the total, 3.7% of the candidates had anemia, 24.5% pre-pregnancy overweight and 63.6% had inadequate weight gain during pregnancy. It was also verified that 15.3% of the nursing mothers had a premature delivery, especially those classified as presenting nutritional abnormalities (p=0.03). It was concluded that the profile identified denotes the importance of implementing actions in support of maternal nutritional status and the increase in donations to human milk banks.