UK Milk Banking

Milk banking and the use of donor breast milk are making a comeback – not just in the UK but worldwide.  Milk banking is now over a hundred years old - the centenary anniversary of the world’s first milk bank was held earlier this year in Vienna, the city where human milk banking started in 1909.  Coincidentally 2009 is also the 70th anniversary of the formal opening of the UK’s oldest milk bank  and one which continues to collect, store, screen, process and distribute donated breast milk. This bank, located in West London at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, is also thought to be the longest continually operating milk bank in the world!
Milk banks in the UK provide specially heat treated breast milk, mainly to premature babies and in these times when we see more and more very early preterm infants surviving, there is a growing demand for donor milk. Of course donor breast milk is only ever second best to the infant’s own mother’s milk and shouldn’t be a substitute for every effort to help and support a new mother to establish lactation and provide her baby with her own milk. However, the realities of having a tiny and possibly very sick baby can impact on a mother’s ability to express enough milk, particularly in the vitally important early days.  When babies are born at less than 26 weeks gestation, the mother may not yet be ready to lactate fully as a result of incomplete developmental changes within her breast tissue which in turn enable breast milk production.  All mothers of sick and premature infants experience the stress, tiredness and anxiety that can also interfere with lactation.  Additionally, there are the mothers whose babies are born early because of their own ill health and who need life saving cancer treatments, or those who spend time in intensive care because of problems that arise during childbirth or as a result of pre existing health problems.  These are the times when donor milk is on hand in some neonatal units to ensure infants can still be fed with breast milk and when the availability of donor milk can be so very supportive for the mother.
Given the fact that breast milk is now unequivocally the preferred means of feeding premature infants and the research evidence shows they are less likely to develop life threatening gut infections, the increasing interest in human milk banking is understandable. Sadly the provision of donor breast milk as a nationally available resource lags miserably behind. Although the numbers of milk banks and the volumes of donor milk collected from the nation’s donors have both increased there are still large geographical areas where access to donor breast milk remains elusive. The South West and the North East of England, most of East Anglia, the south of Wales and practically all of Scotland are either too far from a milk bank to make obtaining donor milk impractical or the local milk bank doesn’t provide milk outside its local neonatal unit. In an age where the health service is national in name only in so far as access to donor milk is concerned the dilemma for the coming decade is how to match the growing demand for breast milk with its provision. The Department of Health has contributed a huge boost to milk banking by proposing the development of a NICE guideline. This soon to be published document will, it is hoped, provide a sound basis for the hoped for expansion in availability. However before milk banks can widely move from local to regional provision, important and fundamental changes in funding and staffing will be needed. In the interim, the expansion of milk banking services via satellite banks and donor milk depots is already underway. In the South West, many more babies receive access to donor milk as a result of the agreements in place between the milk bank at the Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton and satellite banks in Exeter, Portsmouth etc. In return local women can donate their surplus breast milk which travels to the central bank to be tested and heat treated prior to being refrozen and finally issued from the bank.
Want to find out more about milk banking?
Visit the United Kingdom Association for Milk Banking (UKAMB) website: www.ukamb.org where you will find a section ‘Become a Donor’. Here you can watch a film that shows how milk banks work.  If you are interested in becoming a donor go to the ‘Your Milk Bank’ section and find your closest milk bank. Contact them to find out if they recruit donors from your area. If not, consider contacting other milk banks if they are situated close to a place that you or your partner visits on a regular basis (because you visit friends or relatives for example.) Milk banks are locally funded and cannot usually recruit donors who live too far away because of the costs of collecting their milk however some do collect over a much wider area and others will happily recruit donors if they or their partner are able to deliver their milk.
If you’re not able to donate breast milk but want to support milk banking and help sick babies to receive donor milk in another way, UKAMB will be very pleased to hear from you.  This very small charity needs financial as well as other support. UKAMB has a Just Giving page; go to: www.justgiving.com/ukamb   where you can help to raise funds for UKAMB and make a real difference to milk banking in this country as well as further affixed.  Every drop counts but every pound donated also counts because with more funds, UKAMB could do so much more.
UKAMB will soon be launching the song ‘Every Drop Counts’ generously donated by singer songwriter Sedleigh to help raise funds for UKAMB. Do please listen out for it!! Two very noble guys, Steve and Harv from West London are also planning a mammoth cycle ride from John O’Groats to Lands End in aid of UKAMB and will need sponsors to help them on their way. Their sponsorship is all going to UKAMB so something else to watch out for.  Further details will all feature on the UKAMB website as soon as they are confirmed.

Gillian Weaver - Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust