Human Milk Bank: Continuing the “Mother – Baby Friendly” Tradition

Posted on Aug 18, 2017

St. Luke’s Medical Center has always been an advocate and champion of natural breastfeeding in the Philippines. It has been recognized as a “mother-baby friendly” hospital by the Department of Health (DOH), and has actively contributed to increasing breastfeeding awareness among the general public.

Natural mother’s milk is much more nutritious and safer to newly born infants and babies. It contains immune-protective hormones and organisms, live enzymes and growth factors that are not found in commercial formula milk. Thus, the DOH has consistently been promoting breastfeeding in the country.

In this light, St. Luke’s has opened the country’s first Human Milk Bank last 2014 that collects and provides pre-qualified and safe milk to sick and pre-term infants confined in both St. Luke’s Medical Center Global City and Quezon City hospital. It will also serve infant patients whose mothers are unable to breastfeed.

Human milk banking is part of the Infant and Young Child Feeding Program of the Philippine under the DOH. The establishment of the St. Luke’s Human Milk Bank is not for profit but is geared towards social responsibility as a way to promote breastfeeding among mothers, particularly in the depressed communities.