A new facility for the "Breast Milk Bank", which provides breast milk collected from donors to babies born underweight, has been completed in Tokyo, and two locations will be operational in Japan from next month.
The "Breast Milk Bank" provides "donor milk", which is collected from donors when the mother cannot breastfeed, to babies born underweight of less than 1500 grams due to premature birth, etc., at the request of medical institutions. It is a facility.
There was only one breast milk bank operating in Japan, but an organization established with the support of the Nippon Foundation has set up a new facility in a building in Chuo-ku, Tokyo, and will start full-scale operation from next month. Start operation.
A breast milk bank room equipped with a pasteurizer can store 5300 liters of donor milk, which is seven times the size of existing facilities, and a laboratory for analyzing nutritional value has also been set up.
This "Japan Foundation Breast Milk Bank" aims to increase the number of donors to 2,900 in five years, and will accept registration on the homepage from the 1st of next month.
Katsumi Mizuno, President of the Japan Foundation Breast Milk Bank, said, "About 5,000 babies who need donor milk are born each year, and the challenge is to increase the number of affiliated medical institutions and secure donors. I want you to know widely that milk saves many lives. "