After many years and many promises, Ontario finally has a breast milk bank! This is amazing news for those babies who most need donated milk. Until now, milk for vulnerable babies whose moms were unable to feed them directly had to be shipped in from outside of the province. Now moms in Ontario can donate milk if they have oversupply and this will mean access to donated milk for a much higher number of at-risk babies.  If you need milk, you need to get a prescription in order to access the bank. For more info on that, go here. If you have milk that you would like to donate, please visit this page to find out more.

Every baby deserves the most nutritious food possible and for the vast majority, that food is breastmilk (the only real exception that I know of being babies with galactosemia). Eventually, it would be wonderful to see the system open up to all babies – not just at risk babies – whose moms are unable to breastfeed for medical reasons and who wish to have breastmilk for their babies. This might further encourage the powers-that-be to ensure that all moms are given adequate education and consistent, good quality support so that they can realize their breastfeeding goals. Believing that you can’t breastfeed your child is a frustrating and heartbreaking experience for many women and sadly, in a huge number of cases, support and education are all that stand between breastfeeding success and failure. We can’t continue to let so many moms and babies fall through the cracks, given the tremendous health benefits of breastfeeding and how much it can mean to moms to be able to achieve their goals.

This is the announcement about the milk bank that I received this morning from The Maternal Newborn and Child Health Promotion (MNCHP) Network:

Located at Mount Sinai Hospital, and in partnership with The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the Milk Bank collects donated breastmilk from lactating women, pasteurizes it, and distributes it by prescription to medically fragile babies in Neonatal Intensive Care Units across Ontario.

The Milk Bank has been developed by some of Canada’s foremost experts in paediatrics and neonatology, including Dr. Shoo Lee, an internationally recognized neonatologist and Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health and an inter-professional clinical team from all three hospitals. The process for creating the Milk Bank included ensuring regulatory approvals for donor milk banking and conducting research about the benefits of donor breastmilk for very low birth weight babies. The safety and quality of donor human milk is the Milk Bank’s top priority, and The Rogers Hixon Ontario Human Milk Bank meets or exceeds all safety standards for donor human milk banking.

Evidence from the medical literature was used to determine the eligibility criteria for babies to receive donor breastmilk. The research determined that providing donor breastmilk to a specific group of infants – preterm or very low birth weight hospitalized babies – can protect them against life-threatening illnesses such as necrotizing enterocolitis and potentially against serious infections and other complications related to preterm birth.

The Rogers Hixon Ontario Human Milk Bank is made possible through the generous support of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the Rogers Foundation.

http://milkbankontario.ca/