Breast milk stocks too low

Breast milk banks are running so low in Queensland there is only two weeks’ supply left.

Australian Red Cross Lifeblood needs to triple the number of Queensland donors to help restock the freezers for premature and low-birthweight babies.

Donated breast milk is essential when a mother’s own milk is not available for the babies to help them grow and prevent health complications, including a type of gut infection called necrotising enterocolitis that can be fatal.

Lifeblood currently supplies 120 litres of milk to 19 hospitals across Queensland every month “on demand” from a milk facility located in Brisbane.

Lifeblood milk service manager Chris Sulfaro said the service needed three times the number of donors it had in Brisbane and the southeast to keep up with demand, with the service currently at less than two weeks’ supply.

“Right now, we’re relying on milk donations given by mothers in other states to help meet our demand here in Queensland, and we’re calling for new donors who may have more milk than they need to find out about donating their breast milk,” Ms Sulfaro said.

“We’re particularly looking for mothers who live in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Ipswich and have more than three litres of frozen or expressed milk that is less than 10 weeks old, and who pass our eligibility criteria, to get in touch.”

To make donating as easy as possible for donors, mothers can express, freeze, and store their breastmilk in their own home or hospital, if their baby is still in hospital.

“Donations are picked up from the donor’s home or at the hospital by one of our milk donor co-ordinators, who are there to support and guide mums throughout the whole donation process,” she said.

She said many mothers needed a bridge of support while their own supply was establishing, if they had a baby in a neonatal intensive care unit.

“Donated breast milk is liquid gold for premature or very sick and small babies,” she said.