Women with milk to spare can supply it to a breast milk bank.
Donated milk can be transported from milk banks to pre-term or sick babies in other hospitals. Babies whose own mothers aren’t feeding them, and who may particularly benefit from donated milk, include very low birthweight pre-terms in their first week of life (as they tolerate donated milk better than pre-term formula); babies who aren’t growing and thriving; those who’ve had bowel surgery; those who have a poorly functioning immune system; and certain older babies with diarrhoea and other bowel symptoms from severe food intolerance.
Donor mothers are carefully screened by asking about their medical history and drug intake, and doing blood tests. A donor should not have a current medical condition requiring medication, nor a family history of TB or CJD (Creutzfeld Jacob disease). She shouldn’t ever have taken growth hormone. And she shouldn’t have been vaccinated recently. If a woman is taking any drugs - including aspirin, herbal remedies and the Pill - her milk may be unacceptable (though certain drugs, for example insulin, or those in asthma inhalers, are all right). And she shouldn’t be a smoker, drink more than a small amount of alcohol, or drink an excessive number of caffeine-containing drinks each day. She’ll be tested for HIV 1 and 2, hepatitis B and C, human T cell leukaemia viruses and syphilis.
If screening is satisfactory, the woman receives detailed instructions about how to collect, store and transport her milk; this is then cultured to make sure its bacteria count is low enough, heat-treated/sterilised/pasteurised at 62.5ºC for 30 minutes (if following UK milk banking guidelines) to kill as many disease-causing bacteria and viruses as possible (including cytomegaloviruses, and HIV that hasn’t shown up in blood tests), and then frozen for up to six months.
Ideally, donated breast milk should not be heat-treated (pasteurised) at all, as this destroys live cells. However, heating it to temperatures lower than 62.5ºC may not kill certain bacteria, for example, those that cause tuberculosis. It also destroys lipase; babies fed heat-treated breast milk gain less weight than those given raw milk, as they need lipase in order to absorb fat.
Another problem is that donated milk is often ‘drip’ milk - milk that drips from one breast while the donor’s baby feeds from the other. And drip milk is low in fat anyway, containing only two thirds of the calories of expressed milk. However, donated breast milk has helped save the lives of many sick or tiny babies whose own mothers could not or would not feed them themselves.
If you have milk to spare and want to donate it, your doctor, midwife, health visitor or the staff at the nearest hospital that has a special care baby unit, will advise you what to do.
Dr. Penny Stanway
June 2009
Buy Dr. Penny Stanway's Book 'Breast Is Best' Here
Details of the The UK Association of Milk Banks (UKAMB) can be found at www.ukamb.org |
Introduction to our Breast Feeding Section
