Mothers’ views on donor milk and human milk banks

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Human milk banking is becoming widespread in many countries. In Turkey is a controversial topic with reasons, such as traditional and religious beliefs. The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge and opinions of mothers on donor milk and milk banking. METHOD: This study was cross-sectional, descriptive and comparative. In the study between 1th of October-30th of December 2018, a total of 252 mothers who applied to the gynecology outpatient clinics of a state hospital volunteered to participate. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews. IBM SPSS Statistics 21 package program was used to evaluate the data. Ethical Committee and related consents were taken. RESULTS: The mean age of the mothers participating in the study was 33 ± 7,233 years and 47,6% had heard of the human milk bank before. 49,2% of the participants stated that they could advise other mothers to buy milk from the milk bank. However, 43,7% reported that they did not want to buy milk from their milk bank for their baby when they needed it. The mothers indicated that 67,9% of them were concerned about transmission of the disease as the reason for not wanting to benefit from the milk bank. 66,3% think that the milk banks would make sense if the family that gave milk and the milk was registered and recognized each other. DISCUSSION and CONCLUSION: The results of the study show similarities with our research, but the majority of mothers' lack of knowledge about donor milk and milk banks is more than the importance of religious and cultural beliefs.