The Pilot study and the project management team believe that the project was viable as a stand alone unit. Ideally it would be phased in two stages.
When Stage 1&2 are fully operational we would expect about 200 Western Australian babies per year to benefit from their own mother’s milk fortifier.
This development is important for the health of pre-term babies. A 1kg pre-term baby requires about 150-170ml/day of mother’s milk. In supportive hospitals, approximately 70% of the mothers who are expressing their milk for their pre-term babies produce more than 350ml/day of breast milk. Thus these mother’s have 200ml or more of milk available each day for the production of a mother’s own milk fortifier. This project targets more than 50% of the pre-term babies at both KEMH and PMH.
No studies are available that specifically examine the proposition of modifying mother’s own milk as a fortifier for pre-term babies. However, all the evidence suggests that this would be either as good as or better than a fortifier produced from cow’s milk.
Funding has been obtained from the Raine Foundation for a two year study to validate this hypothesis. This grant provides a two year position for a Research Assistant to undertake the processing of the mother’s own milk at KEMH and in addition a PhD Scholarship from Medela AG, Switzerland for Ching Tat Lai will ensure that the project has sufficient staff for its initial success.
Currently the provision of Commercial fortifiers for pre-term babies is one of the major non-salary costs in running the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at KEMH. This cost will be saved with the production of a fortifier from mother’s own milk and this saving will be available to assist in the cost of maintaining the project once it is established.
KEMH has undertaken to provide space and ongoing operating costs for the project and a suitable room next to the NICU has been reserved for processing the human milk.
