http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/12/1092102573402.html
Australia's first milk bank
August 12, 2004 - 1:06PM

Australia's first milk bank is to start offering breast milk to new mothers in Victoria from the beginning of next year. 
Melbourne-based lactation consultant Margaret Callaghan plans to open the private service which will pasteurise milk donations and offer them to mothers who cannot produce enough for their own babies. 

The proposal has raised questions about how the new service would be regulated. 

Ms Callaghan said the private company setting up the Victorian milk bank planned to set up in NSW next and then to establish clinics nationwide. 

She said new mothers who wanted to donate would be screened for disease and would then express the milk at home. 

"It wouldn't be like a cow shed," she said. 

The milk would be pasteurised and given to premature babies whose mothers for some reason could not provide enough milk. 

Premature babies would be targeted initially as they were the most likely to suffer necrotising enterocolitis (NEC), or bowel blockages, after being fed formula, she said. 

Mothers milk also aided neurological development and reduced the risks of infections, Ms Callaghan said. 
Hospitals used to provide excess milk from new mothers to babies who needed it until the rise of the spectre of AIDS in the 80s. 

Ms Callaghan said that as the average age of mothers increased, so had the demand for breast milk. 

"I have people ringing me saying 'Where can I get some human milk from'," she said. 

The president of paediatrics and child health of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Professor Don Roberton today said any move to make breast milk more available was positive as long as the milk was properly screened for disease. 

Professor Roberton said human milk had advantages over formula, especially for premature babies. 

"But we also have to be very aware of any potential risks that might occur with human milk," he said. 

Breast milk would need to be carefully screened in the same way donated blood was, he said. 

Breast milk banks operate in the UK, the USA and parts of Europe but the prospect of them opening in Australia has raised the question of who is responsible for their regulation. 

A Therapeutic Goods Administration spokesman said a breast milk bank would be a state rather than a federal responsibility. 

A spokesman for the Victorian Department of Human Services said a breast milk bank would come under the State food act. 

The operators would have to show their product was "free of infection and fit for human consumption" and convince the government that they had strict screening processes in place, he said.

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