Breast milk exchanges between mothers are fine as long as all parties are informed of the risks and the exchanges don't take place in a hospital, according to Northern Health.
Rose Perrin, the executive lead for the perinatal program at Northern Health, said the agency is currently working on a position paper on breast milk exchanges and expects to have a final document prepared by next spring.
The exchanges allow women who are breast feeding their children to collect extra milk and give it to other mothers who are having difficulty feeding their children.
Proponents credit the programs with giving more babies access to the milk, which is good for a child's development. However, there is also the risk of transmitting diseases -- including HIV -- from the donor mother to the recipient child.
"We know breast feeding is a healthy choice and we support breast feeding, it is what we recommend for babies," Perrin said. "But there has to be these safe precautions taken. In the end it's up to the moms to make those decisions."
Perrin said Northern Health doesn't want mothers in hospital to be using shared breast milk due to possible liability issues for the agency if a baby gets sick as a result of the milk.
"What we'd recommend at this point in time is not to used shared milk in the hospital, because we wouldn't have had an opportunity to have it tested medically, we wouldn't have had an opportunity to pasteurize it," she said. "We'd want to make sure that the breast milk was free of contaminants or pathogens and at this point we can't do that."
Those liability issues don't extend to women who engage in exchanges outside of a medical facility. Perrin said the recipient mother should be aware of the risk of disease transmission and select any donor mothers carefully and get as much of a medical history from the donor as possible.
Perrin also recommends sharing milk with mothers you know personally. She's wary of peer-to-peer services, like the Human Milk 4 Human Babies Facebook page, which connect strangers who have surplus milk with others who need it. She said the risk increases when exchanging with strangers because it's difficult to know the full background of the donor.
"You can never be 100 per cent sure. Sometimes we don't know what's in our body fluids, sometimes we don't know personally," she said. "I would be very cautious."
Prince George resident Wendi McKay has shared her breast milk with a stranger in Vanderhoof this month and believes the practice is relatively safe. She said if she found herself in the position of needing breast milk for her children, she wouldn't hesitate to take it from a stranger so long as she was satisfied the person was healthy and currently breast feeding their own child.
"Everything comes with its own inherent risk," she said. "I feed my milk to my baby, my newborn baby. I think in saying that, [a recipient mother] would also feel a bit more comfortable. If I didn't have any children and I was still pumping milk, I think that would be a bit odd."
Health Canada also cautions against sharing breast milk with strangers, but has no problem with breast milk banks where the milk is pasteurized and blended. Perrin hasn't spoken with people running breast milk banks in Vancouver and Calgary, but suspects Prince George isn't big enough to open one of its own.
Despite the concerns over disease transmission, Perrin said she's pleased there's a public discussion about breast milk sharing because she believes it will allow mothers to make an informed choice about whether to participate in exchanges.
Northern Health began preparing its position paper in March after becoming aware of breast milk exchanges in the region. Perrin said the year-long process of crafting the paper includes consulting local experts and current research as well as looking at best practices in other jurisdictions. She's hopeful the paper will not only set a policy for what should happen in hospital settings, but can also provide mothers in the community with advice on how to reduce risks when exchanging milk.
