Hi Kathleen

What a marvellous opportunity!  Does he have a brother :-)

Milk banking is my favourite project right now, having started a human milk
bank in Cape Town.  We find it a wonderful way to promote breastfeeding as
the media is fascinated by the idea of mothers supporting other babies.  One
of my colleagues was interviewed recently for a programme on "Weird and
Wonderful Jobs", and the host marvelled that breastfeeding mothers would
nurse their babies "three times a day" and still take time to express more
milk.   My colleague managed to explain calmly that the mothers would be
nursing 8 or more times a day.....

I'm on my way just now to make a documentary on our Milk Bank for the local
community radio stations.  My interviewer knows a great deal more about
breastfeeding and will ask very sensible questions, I know.  Our milk bank
was originally set up to provide human milk to AIDS orphans, but now that we
are becoming established, we are supplying all sorts of sick and vulnerable
babies, and have supplied three pasteurisers to Cape Town hospitals.

Milk banks can be relatively inexpensive to set up, and they can be housed
in a room about the size of an average bathroom, as long as there is room
for a freezer (or two) and the pasteuriser and a working surface - usually a
hospital will host this for nothing.  On-going expenses involve testing,
containers, communications, perhaps staffing, and transport.  If you want a
mini-outline so that it looks like a viable project, let me know, but you
will have to put in US costs.

I've been greatly inspired in this by Mary Rose Tully's story of the 2000 or
so milk banks in Brazil, even though I only heard the story third or fourth
hand.  If Mary Rose is on this list, perhaps she can add comments.

Jacquie Nutt IBCLC
Western Cape Human Milk Bank
South Africa
[log in to unmask]

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html