EMBA European Milk Bank Association
282 Active milk banks
18 Planned milk banks
Click
for full
map >

World Day of Human Milk Donation 2021; Every Donation Tells A Story

Read the story book >

For more than a decade, the 19th May has been celebrated annually as the internationally designated World Day of Human Milk Donation. Originating in Brazil in 2004 as a national event, the day was created to promote the importance of donating human milk to non-profit human milk banks. It is now marked by milk banks and milk bank supporters globally and with over 750 human milk banks in 66 countries there are very many donors to thank! It is estimated that more than 800,000 infants receive donor human milk each year which suggests that well over 1 million litres of milk are donated annually in support of optimal infant nutrition and breastfeeding.

For this year’s 2021 event, supported by NAWA (Polish National Agency For Academic Exchange) EMBA has launched a month long celebration that will highlight the contribution that the act of human milk donation to milk banks makes to the recipient families. We have set out to record the impact that receiving donor human milk has made to these families and we hope that by doing so, milk donors everywhere will feel appreciated and celebrated on their special day.

Each and every day throughout May, EMBA will feature a different baby who has received donor human milk from a milk bank in Europe. To do this, all of the designated national contacts from the EMBA website were contacted with details of the campaign entitled ‘Every donation tells a story’ – many thanks to them all for their efforts in ensuring we have such inspirational stories to share from across Europe. We will highlight the baby/family of the day on the EMBA social media pages together with a link to the fuller story which will be housed here on the EMBA website. As the stories are added, day by day, they will build into a collection of case histories that illustrate the importance of the work performed by human milk banks as well as the essential, unique, generous and very special role of the milk donors in enabling this work to happen. All of the previous stories will remain on the website throughout May. On May 19th we will start to combine them into a virtual book that will also be able to be viewed on this page.

Read the stories in our blog >

 

To follow EMBA on Social Media:

Facebook >  |   Twitter >

 

More about the WDHMD

View the video of the GAMBA (Global Alliance of Milk Banks and Associations) World Day of Human Milk Donation 2020 (Together we can ….) celebrations here:

View the video >