[Infant feeding and future of manking. Human milk. Human milk banking]

Infant feeding and future of mankind. Human milk. Human milk banking. Human milk is the specific food for infants, it is essencial for suitable growth and development and it spreads its influence until adult life and later. The advantages of breastfeeding for infants and mothers are unquestionable. In the seventies WHO registered a significant decrease of breast feeding that was recovering from the eighties in our country. Nowadays, the maternal intention of breastfeeding is high, but the total duration of the breast feeding is too short. To promote breastfeeding is urgent, specially its duration along infancy. When an infant can't be fed with milk of his own mother, pasteurised milk of selected donor mothers is the best option specially for high risk or ill infants. This milk is got, managed and distributed by human milk banks. We have not human milk banks in Spain, even though we had them in the recent past. Hence it is very important to stablish human milk banking in our country for giving human milk to prematures and ill neonates and infants.