GRAND OPENING OF ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY’s FIRST BREAST MILK DEPOT

Left to Right: Julie Bouchet-Horwitz, Founder and Executive Director of New York Milk Bank; Dr. Kenneth H. Zatz; Senator David Carlucci, and Jane Malone.
Left to Right: Julie Bouchet-Horwitz, Founder and Executive Director of New York Milk Bank; Dr. Kenneth H. Zatz; Senator David Carlucci, and Jane Malone.

The New York Milk Bank, with support from the Allied Foundation, celebrated the grand opening of Rockland County’s first breast milk depot with a ribbon cutting on January 117 at Kenneth H. Zatz, M.D. Pediatrics, located at 18 Washington Ave., Nyack, NY. The depot is for mothers who wish to donate extra breast milk to help save lives and improve the health of vulnerable premature babies.

Left to Right: Mayor Jen White; Founder and Executive Director of New York Milk Bank Julie Bouchet-Horwitz
Left to Right: Mayor Jen White; Founder and Executive Director of New York Milk Bank Julie Bouchet-Horwitz

Kenneth H. Zatz, M.D. Pediatrics, a division of Allied Physicians Group, is a pediatric practice that puts special emphasis on breastfeeding. “We are proud to help facilitate breastfeeding mothers in helping other mothers to provide breast milk to their babies,” stated Dr. Zatz. “It is wonderful to help more infants have access to human milk.”

Left to Right: Mother from community who has used services; Julie Bouchet-Horwitz; Dr. Kenneth H. Zatz; Senator David Carlucci
Left to Right: Mother from community who has used services; Julie Bouchet-Horwitz; Dr. Kenneth H. Zatz; Senator David Carlucci

The United States has 23 milk banks with four others in development. The New York Milk Bank (NYMB) – the first and only milk bank in New York State – opened in September, in Hastings. NYMB screens and tests donors who have extra breast milk, collects and pasteurizes the milk and then distributes to hospitals and the community throughout New York State.

“We are excited to open a depot in Rockland County at Kenneth H. Zatz, M.D. Pediatrics, so that women in Rockland County will have a new location to drop off their extra milk,” Julie Bouchet-¬Horwitz, founder and executive director of the New York Milk Bank, as well as a lactation consultant and family nurse practitioner at Hudson Valley Breastfeeding. “We now have 23 depots throughout New York State, Maryland and New Jersey. This milk is a medicine to many infants and life-saving to preemies and we are doing everything we can to make sure that milk is readily available to all infants in need.”

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