Prevalence and factors associated with breast milk donation in banks that receive human milk in primary health care units.

OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence and to analyze factors associated with breast milk donation at primary health care units in order to increase the human milk bank reserves. METHODS Cross-sectional study carried out in 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A representative sample of 695 mothers of children younger than 1 year attended to at the nine primary health care units with human milk donation services were interviewed. A hierarchical approach was used to obtain adjusted prevalence ratios (APR) by Poisson regression with robust variance. The final model included the variables associated with breast milk donation (p≤0.05). RESULTS 7.3% of the mothers had donated breast milk. Having been encouraged to donate breast milk by healthcare professionals, relatives, or friends (APR=7.06), receiving information on breast milk expression by the primary health care unit (APR=3.65), and receiving help from the unit professionals to breastfeed (APR=2.24) were associated with a higher prevalence of donation. Admission of the newborn to the neonatal unit was associated with a lower prevalence of donation (APR=0.09). CONCLUSIONS Encouragement to breast milk donation, and information and help provided by primary health care unit professionals to breastfeeding were shown to be important for the practice of human milk donation.