Breastmilk as a commodity

Run out of Minnesota, the International Breast Milk Project (IBMP) sends breastmilk to infants in South Africa-- to milk banks in Cape Town and Durban. Their focus is emergency relief to infants who can't be breastfed and their tagline is 'Give Milk. Give Life. Give Hope'.  The project is a non-profit that seeks to develop milk banks and to make them sustainable over time.  The in-country milk banks start with a large proportion of donated milk and some funding from IBMP  and then develop local funding sources and local donors.  The GiveMilk project partners with Quick International Courier for transport and logistics and with Prolacta Bioscience in Monrovia which works on processing and packaging the breastmilk.  In December, the IBMP announced that it had sent 364 gallons of breast milk to South Africa, enabling a month of feeding for 75 infants-- a total of 1750 donors are providing milk (263,000 oz so far) to the project from the U.S..  This is such a fascinating means of giving support to newborns and is such a novel twist on the issue of the commodification of the human body.  It is innovation + neonatal health + breastfeeding promotion + low-tech entrepreneurship combined in a natural solution.

In addition to their longer-term capacity-building, IBMP also works on emergency projects like Haiti.  What will it take to provide breastmilk to Haiti?  Where conditions aren't sterile processing and packaging the milk is an issue but the IBMP team is working to make it happen.