Hospitals struggle to attract donors, parents turn to online marketplace
After a face-to-face interview and several rounds of blood tests, Wu Fangting (pseudonym), 26, officially became a donor to the breast milk bank at the Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center.
She was assigned serial number 452, meaning Wu is the center's 452nd donor.
Each day, four or five women like Wu donate their healthy breast milk to the bank for free, which is able to feed five or six sick babies in the hospital. But it's not enough - a total of 90 sick babies in the hospital need breast milk every day, Liu Xihong, co-founder of the bank with the Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center, told the Health News, a newspaper under the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
The Guangzhou center in South China's Guangdong Province established the mainland's first breast milk bank in March 2013, followed by medical centers in Jiangsu Province's Nanjing and Zhangjiagang.
All of the banks are now challenged by the difficulty of attracting donors and seeking enough funds to maintain their operations. Meanwhile, an online market for breast milk is booming.
Far from enough
To become a donor, according to Wu, mothers have to go through two stages. The first stage is interviews about possible bad habits, such as smoking, drinking and taking drugs, and to ensure the donor's baby is younger than 10 months old.
The second stage is blood tests. The donor is first tested for infectious diseases including HIV, hepatitis B and syphilis. After passing the tests, nurses will pump the donor's milk at the bank and then freeze it after disinfection, and they will also label each milk bottle with the donor's information, including the name, time of donation and the amount.
The donor has to have a second round of blood tests after the donation. If she fails the test, the milk she donated will be discarded.
The frozen breast milk can be stored for a maximum of half a year in the bank's refrigerator, according to the Southern Weekly.
Zhao Zhide, a science author, told the Beijing News that breast feeding prevents obesity and diabetes for babies, and reduces the rate of allergies and tympanitis.
The breast milk contains several nutrients that benefit ill, malnourished or premature infants, Liu said, adding that the donated milk is provided to sick infants for free.
The breast milk bank in Liu's hospital occupies a 20-square-meter room, and contains three refrigerators, an electric milk pump and milk analysis equipment.
So far, the hospital has received 600 liters of milk, which helped feed 110 sick babies.
