• Identifying healthy, lactating moms with oversupplies of milk and encouraging them to call the closest milk bank.
• Identifying babies who might benefit from donor human milk.
• Encouraging human milk for all babies.
• Sharing Milk Bank brochures and materials with pregnant or lactating moms to inform them of their option to donate milk.
• Making a financial donation to the Mothers’ Milk Association.

Milk Dispensation:
Milk is dispensed by prescription only. The highest-priority recipients are premature and ill hospitalized infants. All infants who have a medical need for human milk can obtain donor human milk by prescription.

Safety of Banked Donor Milk
Non- profit donor human milk banking has a long safety record in North America where processed human milk from screened donors has been provided to patients in selected neonatal intensive care units since 1943.

To ensure a safe product, HMBANA Guidelines, under which all member banks must operate, establish best practice based on current evidence. Just as with other donor tissue banking, the milk banks rely on extensive testing and processing procedures as well as self-reported health information.

HMBANA also requires a health statement from both the donor’s healthcare provider and her infant’s healthcare provider. HMBANA Guidelines, which were first published in 1990, are used globally as a standard for donor milk banking.

Indications (partial list)
-Prematurity
-Failure to thrive
-Malabsorption syndromes
-Short-gut syndrome
-Renal failure
-Inborn errors of metabolism

Preventative Uses:
-Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC)
-Allergies or intolerance to cow and soy milks
-Pre- or Post-surgical nutrition
-Pediatric burn patients

Medicinal/Therapeutic Uses:
Treatment for infectious diseases...
-intractable diarrhea
-sepsis
-pneumonia

Also:
-organ transplants (including adults)
-intra-utero exposure to narcotics

"Breast milk is particularly important for pre-term infants and the small proportion of term infants with very low birth weight; they are at increased risk of infection, long-term ill-health, and death."

–World Health Organization

"In situations where a mother’s own milk is not available to meet her baby’s needs, pasteurized donor human milk is the ideal replacement. The use of donor human milk has saved infant lives and positively impacted the health outcomes of countless premature and sick infants through therapy and prevention of disease."

United States Breastfeeding Committee, 2008