3 Sarna A, Porwal A, Ramesh S, et al. Characterisation of the types of anaemia prevalent among children and adolescents aged 1-19 years in India: a population-based study.
If maternal milk is unavailable, the World Health Organization recommends that the first alternative should be pasteurised donor human milk (DHM). Human milk banks (HMBs) screen and recruit milk donors, and DHM principally feeds very low birth weight babies, reducing the risk of complications and supporting maternal breastfeeding where used alongside optimal lactation support. The COVID‐19 pandemic has presented a range of challenges to HMBs worldwide. This study aimed to understand the impacts of the pandemic on HMB services and develop initial guidance regarding risk limitation. A Virtual Collaborative Network (VCN) comprising over 80 HMB leaders from 36 countries was formed in March 2020 and included academics and nongovernmental organisations. Individual milk banks, national networks and regional associations submitted data regarding the number of HMBs, volume of DHM produced and number of recipients in each global region. Estimates were calculated in the context of missing or incomplete data. Through open‐ended questioning, the experiences of milk banks from each country in the first 2 months of the pandemic were collected and major themes identified. According to data collected from 446 individual HMBs, more than 800,000 infants receive DHM worldwide each year. Seven pandemic‐related specific vulnerabilities to service provision were identified, including sufficient donors, prescreening disruption, DHM availability, logistics, communication, safe handling and contingency planning, which were highly context‐dependent. The VCN now plans a formal consensus approach to the optimal response of HMBs to new pathogens using crowdsourced data, enabling the benchmarking of future strategies to support DHM access and neonatal health in future emergencies.
Unlike gravity feedings, the timed feedings resulted in a statistically significant loss of fat as compared with their controls. These findings should raise questions about how those infants in the neonatal intensive care unit are routinely gavage fed.
There was no evidence of microbes in PDHM as dispensed by HMBANA milk banks when defrosted and stored at 4ºC for up to 9 days. Extended storage of PDHM in the NICU could reduce waste of donor milk, thereby increasing availability of human milk to vulnerable neonatal patients.
BackgroundInfrared (IR) analysis is an emerging technology that may be a useful tool for milk banks to manage the nutrient variability in donor human milk.ObjectiveTo evaluate the accuracy, reliability, and comparability of commercial infrared analyzers for measuring human milk macronutrients in a milk bank setting.MethodsThree nonprofit milk banks received blinded test kits of human milk that had been assessed using reference methods. Four infrared instruments were used to measure macronutrients as follows: 1 filtered mid-IR, 2 Fourier-transformed full-spectra mid-IR, and 1 near-IR. Twenty-five unique samples were read concurrently for the accuracy arm. An identical sample was read daily for 1 mo for the reliability arm.ResultsValues for R2 describing relationships with reference methods for total fat, crude protein, and lactose, were as follows: filtered mid-IR, 0.98, 0.94, and 0.48; Fourier-transformed full-spectra mid-IR, 0.97, 0.93, and 0.36 for instrument 1 and 0.98, 0.98, and 0.31 for instrument 2; and near-IR 0.93, 0.93, and 0.12. There was no significant difference between instruments for crude protein and total fat measurements. There were significant differences in carbohydrate measurements between instruments. For 1 mo of daily measurements in the reliability arm, CVs for filtered mid-IR were ≤4.6%, for Fourier-transformed full spectra mid-IR were ≤1.7%, and for near-IR were ≤5.1%.ConclusionsInfrared analysis is an accurate and reliable method for measuring crude protein and total fat in a milk bank setting. Carbohydrate measurements are less accurate and are significantly different between instruments, which will likely lead to differences in derived calorie values.
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