Donor breast milk

A simple system for the collection and storage of human milk, as a voluntary community activity, is described. The case is made for preferring drip breast milk as the main source of human milk for the milk bank. The central place of precise pasteurization is emphasised as the essential feature for maintaining bacteriological quality control and simplicity of organisation. The suitability of donor breast milk for the nutrition of the low birthweight infant is discussed and evidence presented to indicate that low birthweight infants fed exclusively on donated human milk are of similar size to control term infants when assessed at 18 months corrected postnatal age. Emphasis is placed on the importance of controlled trials in relation to all innovations in feeding of low birthweight infants.