Breast milk banks opening soon in Quezon City

To provide infants with the healthiest, cheapest and most accessible form of milk, Quezon City will soon establish breast milk banks in all of its government hospitals offering pediatric care.

Mayor Herbert Bautista has approved the “Quezon City Human Milk Bank Ordinance” under the policy that breast-feeding is the normal way of providing young infants with the nutrients they need for healthy growth and development.

The proposed ordinance was introduced on Sept.  17 by  Councilor Julienne Alyson Rae Medalla.

The ordinance creates within the city-owned hospitals’ pediatrics divisions a human milk bank section that would collect, screen, process, store and distribute donated human milk.

The section would basically operate like a blood bank where infants who do not have access to their own mothers’ milk would be provided an alternative feeding option.

The milk banks, the ordinance stated, should be operated on a nonprofit basis but a minimal processing fee may be charged for the screening process and administrative costs.

The donated breast milk would be dispensed by prescription or by hospital purchase order to infants at the intensive care unit, pediatric wards, pay wards and emergency rooms. Jeannette I. Andrade