Appeal for donations as breast milk shortage threatens premature babies
The South African Breast Milk Reserve says demand continues to outpace supply, and has urged healthy mothers to donate breast milk.
Founder and Executive Director, Stasha Jordan, says the organisation currently has about 1,500 units of donated milk in storage.
She says it only covers one month’s supply for the thousands of premature and critically ill babies who rely on it each year.
Jordan says donor milk is often a lifeline for newborns in neonatal intensive care units.
She says in some cases, mothers are too ill to breastfeed.
“Breast milk donations support very vulnerable babies at the beginning of the life cycle, when sometimes their own mummies pass away during labour and birth. It matters, especially if they leave behind very low birth weight babies that can only drink breast milk.
“When babies weigh less than 1.8 kilos, it is dangerous to feed them artificially because they are risk [for] necrotising enterocolitis.”
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