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CDC Alert – HIV Risk from Pumped Breast Milk Accidental Switch
By
Danelle Ice - Home Ever After |
January 14th, 2010 |
Category:
Baby |
2 comments
If you’re a working mom or even using a day care facility for your baby occasionally, you may be pumping breast milk for your baby to be fed by the child care provider. Please be aware of something very important: what to do in case your pumped breast milk is accidentally switched with another mom’s and your baby is fed a stranger’s milk.
Although I had never considered this before, human error does make it possible for an accidental breast milk switch to happen. This can be dangerous! According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which I consider to be the utmost authority on safety:
“If a child has been mistakenly fed another child’s bottle of expressed breast milk, the possible exposure to HIV or other infectious diseases should be treated just as if an accidental exposure to other body fluids had occurred.”
The CDC offers the steps to take if your child has been accidentally exposed to another woman’s breast milk accidentally, including information about the likelihood of HIV transmission. You can read the CDC’s article here, and it never hurts to print it out and save it in your day care file or even take a copy to your daycare.
Oh how scary! I’ve had friends and relatives who have done this and none of us ever thought of this possiblity! But it’s definitely something to think about with more moms working and breastfeeding! Thanks for a good heads up!
@Kaye: I never thought of it either. There are probably a lot of daycares who haven’t planned ahead for what to do in an accident either.
Danelle