elisheva, you ask exactly the correct questions i was hoping someone would
ask, so i could go on about it. you do not have to have a local milk bank,
you can indeed get it in twenty four hours. of course this won't work for
every case, so the other idea is to set up a milk dispensary, like a tissue
bank. you don't necessarily have to "harvest" tissue or organs to have them
available. you can indeed set up a sytem to "stockpile" milk in lieu of
future need. and donors can, of course, ship frozen milk to whichever milk
bank they hook up with, and the milk bank pays the costs.

at the terrific and wonderful you-shouldn't-oughta-miss-it conference in
albuquerque, i was talking up the milk bank, and i was absolutely astounded
at the number of people who told me "i have moms ask how to donate milk" and
"i have moms with extra milk right now today" and "there is milk still
sitting in the freezer i the nicu and i can't bear to throw it away." yeah!

milk banking suffered a terrible setback when AIDS became a problem, due
largely to misundertandings in the medical community. i still hear from
people who really oughta know better that "our milk bank had to close down
because of AIDS" and other such unreasonable reasons.

and you are entirely correct, it is overnight express in fedex or those
lovely brown ups trucks, with ice. no problems.

the real problem, however, is the lack of good information, as elisheva
points out, and the lack of knowledge. as long as nurses and hcps don't know
the advantages of breastmilk over formula, and don't know enough about the
safety of it or how to prescribe and use it, it will remain impossible.
education.

carol brussel IBCLC

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