INDIANA (WTWO/WAWV) — Officials with the Milk Bank in Indiana are urging more women to donate breast milk as the state begins to see an urgent need to help medically fragile babies in the area.
Drop off sites in Terre Haute for breast milk donation include Union Hospital and the blood donation site Versiti on South Third Street.
According to the Milk Bank, human milk is a life-saving intervention for premature and fragile infants. Donor human milk is most often used in NICUs when a parent’s milk is unavailable.
“We’re seeing a really sharp increase in demand in human donor milk,” Freedom Kolb with the Milk Bank said. “So what that has meant for us, there’s been a 58 percent increase in requests from hospital, neo-natal intensive care units and outpatients in the last 5 months of 2021 compared to the first 5 months.”
“The Mile Bank” hopes to add 300 donors to the Milk Bank system by the end of the year. For more information on how to become a donor, click here.