MONTREAL — A Quebec organization is studying the costs, risks and benefits of establishing a human milk bank that would extend the well-known benefits of breast milk to Quebec infants whose mothers are unable to adequately nurse them.

While milk banks are common in Europe and linked closely to medical services for premature babies, Vancouver boasts the only accredited milk bank in Canada; Toronto is in the process of establishing the country's second.

The $66,000 feasibility study now under way could open the door to the establishment of a milk bank in Quebec, said Marc Germain, vice-president of medical affairs for Hema-Quebec. The non-profit organization manages the Quebec's blood supply and is undertaking the study, with results expected in early 2011.

Although Hema-Quebec's mandate does not include the operation of a milk bank, Germain said Quebec's Health Department could change that. Hema-Quebec already collects, screens and distributes biological products, such as blood and plasma and, more recently, cord blood from pregnant women, he said.

Germain said the idea for a study came last spring when Marie-Josee Legault, an official with the Montreal Public Health Department, and Dr. Jacques Levesque, a leading Quebec obstetrician-gynecologist, both contacted Hema-Quebec independently requesting they look at the possibility.

"We no longer talk about the benefits of breastfeeding, but (rather) the risks of not breastfeeding," said Dr. Anjana Srinivasan, who welcomed Monday the idea of a milk bank.

Srinivasan is the medical co-director of the Jewish General Hospital's Breastfeeding Clinic, a tertiary care centre that sees between 15 and 20 women a day who are referred over breastfeeding issues. She said they routinely see women who are unable to produce a sufficient milk supply because of hormonal imbalances, illnesses and other reasons, such as babies who have had trouble latching on, making it difficult for them to stimulate their mother's supply.

Various protocols, including pumping, can help in some cases but in many others, a milk bank can be a lifesaver.

Infants who are not breastfed exclusively up to the age of six months have increased morbidity rates and suffer a range of short- and long-term health issues, Srinivasan said.

Such children are 2.8 times more likely to develop gastrointestinal infections and two times more likely to develop ear infections, while pre-term infants who are not breastfed exclusively are 2.4 times more likely to develop necrotizing enterocolitis, a life-threatening illness for preemies, she said.

Even though milk banks are common in Europe — the European Milk Bank Association lists 155 in 23 countries, with 10 more planned — their introduction in North America has been slow.

Dr. Jack Newman, a Toronto physician and leading authority on breastfeeding, said although the Canadian Paediatric Society has rescinded its 1990 position opposing breast-milk banks, the medical establishment has not kept pace with the growing list of benefits supporting breastfeeding.

"Essentially, the formula companies in their marketing have basically convinced everyone, including many pediatricians, that formula is just as good as breast milk," he said. "It's not."