Guidance
This guideline covers how donor milk banks should recruit, screen and support women who donate breast milk. It also covers how milk banks should handle and process the breast milk they receive from donors. It aims to improve the safety of donor milk and operation of donor milk services.
Recommendations
- quality assurance of equipment for processing donor milk
- recruiting, screening and testing donor women
- training and supporting donors
- how women should express milk at home for donation
- handling donor milk at home, during transportation and at the milk bank
- tracking and tracing donor milk
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- Staff involved in the collection, storage and handling of donor milk
- Staff in community services that support breast milk donors and mothers or carers of infants receiving donor milk
- Women who donate breast milk or who would like to donate breast milk
- Mothers and carers of infants who receive donor breast milk
Is this guideline up to date?
July 2018: We have found no new evidence that affects the recommendations. For more information, see the surveillance decision.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called donor milk banks: the operation of donor milk bank services.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.