300 Mother's Milk Donors Needed

MONTRÉAL, Oct. 20, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Héma-Québec's Public Mothers' Milk Bank is intensifying its activities to recruit mothers from the metropolitan communities of Montréal and Québec City. In order to attain the objective of 500 participants each year, the organization is looking for 300 additional donors.

Every mother who is breastfeeding her child under the age of 12 months and who wants to donate her surplus milk can now take part in the Public Mothers' Milk Bank program and can sign up, based on her place of residence (Montréal or Québec City regions) rather than based on the hospital where she gave birth. In the past, only woman who had given birth in certain hospitals were eligible to donate their blood. This modification has been made so as to respond to the increasing needs of the neonatology teams of hospitals, which are ordering units of milk from the Public Mothers' Milk Bank.

Since it was created in April 2014, 480 mothers have donated their milk to the Bank, which has distributed more than 8,000 bottles of milk in five hospitals in Québec. Little Justine, who was born at 28 weeks and is now six months old, has benefited from this milk. "Since my daughter was born prematurely, I never managed to stimulate my milk production. When the medical team at the Centre mère-enfant Soleil au CHUL suggested that I turn to Héma-Québec's Public Mothers' Milk Bank to feed my baby, I didn't hesitate for a second," explained Kathleen Foster.

Mothers who wish to contribute to the Public Mothers' Milk Bank can find information and complete the registration form on Héma-Québec's Web site at www.hema-quebec.qc.ca, Mother's Milk section.

Héma-Québec manages the only public mother's milk bank in Québec. It provides pasteurized human milk to premature babies born at 32 weeks and less who require medical care and whose mothers cannot breastfeed.

About Héma-Québec

Héma-Québec's mission is to efficiently meet the needs of the Québec population for safe, optimal-quality blood and blood products, human tissues, cord blood, mother's milk and cellular products; and to develop and provide expertise and specialized, innovative services in the field of human biological products.

Héma-Québec encompasses 1,300 employees, over 300,000 donor visits to blood drives per year, 16,000 volunteers and more than 500,000 blood products delivered annually to Québec hospitals to meet the needs of patients.

Give blood. Give life.

SOURCE Héma-Québec

For further information: Héma-Québec, Media line: 514 832-0871, www.hema-quebec.qc.ca