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Plans dry up for breast milk bank

By Cao Li (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-09 09:23

SHANGHAI: A plan to open the country's first human milk bank has been suspended, an insider told China Daily Wednesday.

Hu Min, secretary general of Ningbo Breast Feeding Association, said that it is impossible to collect enough breast milk because fewer mothers are breastfeeding.

"And we can hardly compete with rich baby formula producers," he said.

The association was founded in May 2007 in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, as an advocacy group for breastfeeding and the opening of the human milk bank.

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The plan called for staff to drive a specialized vehicle around Ningbo to collect breast milk from donors, which would then be sterilized and frozen.

Mothers who could not produce breast milk could then get it from the bank, paying only a small fee to cover storage costs.

Hu said he had received many calls from people interested in buying breast milk.

"One man from Anhui province called to buy breast milk because his wife was away on business," he recalled.

"I told him the mother should feed the baby herself."

However, the country's breastfeeding rate has dropped 20 percent over the past decade, even though experts have been advocating it for its nutritional and immunity-boosting qualities.

A survey by the China Consumers Association, which interviewed 15,000 mothers in 30 cities, found that just over half of them breastfed for six months or more.

The city's women's federation has been calling for the establishment of nurseries in offices so mothers can feed babies during breaks.

A mother of a 6-year-old boy surnamed Li, said her baby was weaned soon after she went back to work.

"Since I could not feed him as often as I did in the first four months, my milk dried up quickly," she said.

"I wish I could have fed him myself longer, but I needed my job."

The city's women's federation has been calling for the establishment of nurseries in offices so mothers can feed babies during breaks.

"But it is not easy to take babies to work," Li said.