Newborn, premature babies, who are born underweight in the neo-natal intensive care unit of Royal Hobart Hospital in Tasmania, are now being offered donated human breast milk in a bid to help them put on weight.
The donated breast milk is screened and pasteurised in Brisbane, and is then packed in dry ice, before being flown to the most southern Australian state.
And as new mum, Emily Blake tells the ABC, it took the pressure off her to wait for her own milk supply to build up when her son, Lucius, was born prematurely at just 29 weeks.
Lactation consultant and the person responsible for getting this partnership off the ground, Christine Galloway, says the milk is screened almost the same way as how blood donors are tested and adheres to a set of very strict testing guidelines.
This is why she is confident that this donated milk is safe for premature babies to consume.
Not only that, but Galloway stresses that some of the good health components of the donated breast milk can actually help to safeguard a baby’s gut – something formula hasn’t been proven to do.
“It’s still got some of the immune factors in it so it so it can coat the gut and protect it which formula does none of those things,” she explains.
According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization [sic], the breastfeeding guidelines that they advocate is that mothers should breastfeed with babies exclusively until they are six months old. Then, infants should be given safe complementary foods “while breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond”.
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