MONTREAL – Quebec families who rely on donated breast milk to feed their newborns are out of luck.
The Montreal-based Héma-Québec breast milk bank has not been delivering for several months because of a series of technical issues.
“Soon after we started our production, we began having some problems,” Marc Germain from Héma-Québec said.
The issues were with the machine used to pasteurize the milk.
Up to 40 Percent of the milk had to be thrown away because it didn’t pass quality control while the breast milk bank says no more than 10% should be wasted.
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Still, Héma-Québec says suspending production is a preventative one and they want families to know that any milk delivered was fine.
“At no point in this episode was there a risk to the infants who received the milk,” explained Germain.
“All the lots that were released to hospitals had passed our quality control test and were deemed safe.”
Héma-Québec asked the company for a new machine but that didn’t meet provincial standards either.
Until they can find a way to waste less of the donated milk, they’re suspending delivery.
Despite these setbacks Héma-Québec is looking for more donors.
They’ve already reached five hundred, but need more for when they start delivering again.
They hope to have the service back up and running by the end of Spring.
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