Partnership supplies donated breast milk to NICU patients at Women & Infants

WOMEN & INFANTS HOSPITAL is now partnering with Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast to offer donated breast milk to premature infants in need of it. / COURTESY WOMEN & INFANTS HOSPITAL

PROVIDENCE – Tiny patients in the neonatal intensive care unit at Women & Infants Hospital now have access to breast milk even if their own mothers are not able to produce enough milk to feed them.

Earlier this month, Women & Infants announced a partnership with Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, which operates under the guidelines of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America.

The program currently supplies donated breast milk for infants born pre-term whose mother’s milk is in short supply. Donated breast milk will soon be available for newborns in the hospital’s regular nurseries.

Dr. Robert Insoft, who is senior vice president of medical affairs and quality and chief medical officer at Women & Infants, as well as medical director of Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, said the partnership provides an important resource for babies in the NICU.

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“I’m a pediatrician, but more importantly I’m also the father of a former premature baby and I can tell you firsthand that I feel extremely confident that if my family needed to use donor breast milk, it would be the best for my son,” he said.

Insoft, a neonatologist, is also a professor of pediatrics at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. In an effort to keep his volunteer service with the milk bank separate from his duties at the hospital, Insoft said he had no part in setting up the program at Women & Infants.

Breast milk donated to the Mothers’ Milk Bank is screened, pasteurized and tested before being dispensed via prescription or a doctor’s order.

Elizabeth Graham is a PBN contributing writer.

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