The Profile of Donors to a Human Milk Bank in a Developing Nation.

Donor human milk plays a vital part in the care of sick neonates. There is paucity of literature on the profile of human milk donors of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This retrospective observational study evaluated the demographic profile of 1,553 donors of a human milk bank of a tertiary care center from a LMIC over a period of 21 months. The mean age of the donors was 21.6 ± 2.7 years. Around 63% of the donors were from the postnatal care wards and 53.3% had given birth to a premature infant. The total volume of human milk donated was 413 L and the mean volume of milk per donor was 268 ± 386 mL. The mean amount of milk donated by the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) mothers was significantly higher when compared to that donated by the postnatal care ward mothers ( = 0.0001). Two-thirds (65.5%) of the donated milk was from mothers who gave birth to a preterm infant and 20.8% was from mothers of preterm neonates of <32 weeks of gestation. There was no statistical difference between the mean amount of milk donated by a mother who had delivered extremely preterm neonates when compared to those who had delivered very preterm neonates ( = 0.18). The predominant donors of a human milk bank from a LMIC are of a younger age group, are more likely to have delivered a premature or a low birth weight baby, and are mostly the ones whose neonates require NICU admission or from postnatal care wards.