Women wanting to donate breast milk have a new place to do so in Spokane.
Mike Barsotti, the chief administrator for Sacred Heart’s Children’s Hospital, said the new donor center expands Providence’s partnership with Mothers Milk Bank in California.
"We've been working with them in terms of helping distribute donor human milk to their NICUs, and so this is just another addition in growing our partnership with them," said Jennifer Benito, the chief executive for Mothers Milk Bank.
Barsotti told SPR News that for years, the hospital collected breast milk from the bank to feed to its newborns and premature infants.
Now, he said, it’s made the investment as a convenience for local donors.
"Sometimes for parents to be able to help to share their breast milk resources with other parents, it is sort of a hassle for them to be able to donate their breast milk," Barsotti said.
They’ve had to package their own samples and mail them to the milk bank. The hospital will now do that for them.
The bank pasteurizes the donor milk and ensures it meets health and safety standards before it’s disseminated to clinics.
Benito said the bank also determines which women are eligible to give.
"For every 100 donors that come, only 30 are able to advance because we medically screen moms so that they are able to donate," she told SPR News.
The bank opened Tuesday on the hospital’s ninth floor and includes a special refrigerator to store the samples.
Sacred Heart’s donor center is the second in Spokane. In April, Deaconess opened a ‘milk drop’ as a partnership with the Northwest Mothers Milk Bank, based in Portland.
