In Calgary, preemies enjoy milk of human kindness

Suppose Calgary cancer patients got access to free, life-saving medication, while those in Edmonton hospitals had to pay or go without.

We’d be outraged. Yet walk into the neonatal intensive care units in Alberta’s two largest cities and you’ll find precisely such inequity. In Calgary, tiny premature babies get the best treatment for free. In Edmonton, parents must pull out their wallets to buy the same thing or put their children’s lives at risk.

The catch? We’re not talking about a drug. We’re talking about the most precious, natural thing in the world: mother’s milk.

This April, Calgary-based volunteers set up a provincial breast milk bank, the second in Canada. Nursing mothers across the province donate their excess milk, free of charge. Red Arrow and Jazoo Express Courier deliver the milk to Calgary, also for free. Volunteers screen and pasteurize it, freeze it and send it to hospitals.

Breast milk is the best food for any infant. But for premature babies, it’s vitally important. Their underdeveloped digestive systems do a poor job of absorbing artificial formula.

Such babies are prone to a serious condition called necrotizing enterocolitis, which attacks the colon and can lead to brain damage.

According to the New England Journal of Medi- cine, the condition has a 30 per cent fatality rate. A 1990 study found the condition six to 10 times more common in babies who received formula rather than breast milk.

At the same time, mothers of premature infants can face particular challenges in breastfeeding. Sometimes, they have medical problems related to the delivery; other times, they lose or never get their milk because they can’t nurse. That’s why donor milk is such a precious gift and why Alberta’s new milk bank is such an extraordinarily important resource.

“If your baby is born in Edmonton and is in the NICU, and needs milk, you have to pay for it,” says Jannette Festival, a registered nurse and lactation consultant, and one of the founders of the Calgary Mothers’ Milk Bank.

“If you’re in Calgary, Alberta Health Services picks it up. I don’t know why that is. It’s not consistent. It’s not right. Moms donate their milk, but parents have to pay to get it. And if your baby needs milk, and you can’t afford it, you go without.”

No one at the milk bank draws a salary. But to cover the costs of processing and storing the milk, they need to charge $14.60 for a fourounce bottle.

Hospitals in Calgary order the milk in bulk, pay for it, and then dispense the tiny amounts each little one can absorb.

In Edmonton, parents have to buy the milk themselves — which means much of it goes to waste, since one preemie can’t drink a whole bottle before it needs to be thrown out. That means parents in Edmonton can pay between $600 and $800 a month for basic nutrition for ailing infants. Those who can’t afford premium care, must leave their babies to struggle and suffer. It’s twotiered medicine at its most basic.

That injustice only affects a handful of desperate parents and critically ill babies.

But Festival argues it would be far cheaper for Edmonton hospitals to buy the milk, than to pay for the surgery often needed to treat necrotizing enterocolitis. This false economy costs us all.

Kerry Williamson, who speaks for the Edmonton zone of Alberta Health Services, says that when AHS moved away from a single health board to a more regional approach, different zones were allowed to set their own policies.

The Calgary zone signed an agreement with the milk bank. The Edmonton zone, says Williamson, plans to sign such a deal soon.

But it hasn’t, yet. It’s a ridiculous situation, a bureaucratic boondoggle. How hard would it be for hospitals to absorb the cost in the short term or to compensate those who pay out of pocket? The fact that Edmonton parents may not have to buy donated milk six months from now won’t help babies in intensive care today.

While needy Edmonton infants go without, Alberta’s breast milk bank has so much surplus, it’s selling emergency milk to hospitals in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and Kamloops.

Alberta’s breast milk bank is new and it’s understandable that it’s taking time to iron out all the kinks.