What We Do
Your valuable breastmilk donation will be used by Prolacta Bioscience®, a for-profit company, to make a complete line of human milk–based nutritional products available for critically ill infants. While a mother’s breastmilk can provide for a large percentage of her baby’s needs, premature and critically ill infants need more protein, calories, and minerals than are naturally occurring in mother’s own milk.
Great care is taken to ensure the highest levels of safety while retaining significantly high levels of important biological activity of these 100% human milk–based products sold to hospitals for the most vulnerable and fragile infants.
Through consumption of concentrated human milk protein, in the form of 100% human milk–based fortifiers or ready-to-feed nutrition from Prolacta, critically ill infants are able to get the nutrition they need to grow while being exclusively fed human milk. Also, when mother’s own milk is not available in the hospital, pasteurized human milk is made from your donation and can be used to ensure a 100% human milk–based diet during hospitalization. This milk provides standardized nutrition when mother’s own milk is not available and contains a minimum of 20 calories/fluid ounce. Donor breastmilk and mother’s own milk can vary widely, so standardized nutrition makes it easier for the healthcare professional to provide adequate and appropriate nutrition to the baby.
The 2012 policy on breastfeeding and the use of human milk issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics states that they recommend all preterm infants be fed human milk, whether mother’s own milk or pasteurized donor breastmilk, when mother’s own milk is unavailable.1
1. Eidelman AI, Schanler RJ, Johnston M, et al. Breastfeeding and the use of human milk. Pediatrics. 2012;129(3):e827-e841.