ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Winter 2015Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life is highly recommended by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organization (WHO) based on its extraordinary range of benefits to both mothers and children. However, only 15% of infants aged 0 to 6 months in some least developed countries such as Nigeria and only 38% of infants worldwide are exclusively breastfed. The low breastfeeding rates are due in large part to a mother’s need to return to work, where mothers have no access to breastfeeding or expressing breast milk at work. Existing commercial grade and personal-use breast pumps are cost prohibitive and difficult to maintain for mothers in low-resource settings where clean water is a challenge and electricity is not available. Therefore, the team designed and prototyped a cheap, easy to clean, and easy to maintain breast pump for working mothers in low-resource settings.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111327/1/09_Report.pd
