MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) -Mothers’ Milk Bank of the Western Great Lakes (Milk Bank WGL) and UnityPoint Health – Meriter have teamed up to provide families in Madison with pasteurized human donor milk.

This is the first time this service is being offered, according to the hospital, and only the second dispensary in the Madison area. The dispensary at the hospital’s outpatient pharmacy will allow families to purchase pasteurized donor milk.

Whitney Woodworth, a lactation consultant with UnityPoint Health – Meriter said this joint effort increases access to lifesaving, critical nutrition for pediatric patients in need. “We offer the option of donor milk for our in-patient families in the NICU and in our normal newborn nursery and sometimes they need that donor milk for short-term use to bridge that gap between the lactating parents milk coming in.”

“We first started using pasteurized donor milk in our NICU for our critical babies and we wanted to make that service available to all our babies,” started Anna Trainor, Meriter lactation consultant. “The demand is higher than we anticipated where the pharmacy staff have increased our par levels of how much we keep on site before needing to re-up to continue to meet the growing demands for breast milk.”