Bone marrow of sis saves 3-yr-old girl suffering from thalassaemia
Times of India | 1 June 2024
Kolkata: In a first at any govt facility in eastern and north-eastern India, a three-year-old girl, Jiya Ghosh, with Beta Thalassaemia Major underwent a fully-matched bone marrow transplant (BMT) successfully at NRS Medical College and Hospital (NRMCH). Doctors found a full matching HLA for Jiya in her nine-year-old sister Hiya.
The child had been requiring two units of blood transfusion each month since the age of one after she was diagnosed with the blood disorder at the state-run hospital’s hematology department.Experts said the standard transplant for thalassaemia is full-matched sibling BMT.
Doctors advised the parents for allogenic stem cell transplantation and parents agreed. When the world was observing World Thalassaemia Day on May 8 this year, the medical team was busy conducting the BMT on the girl. Doctors also overcame the blood group mismatch with efficient handling of blood products.
“Fully-matched BMT for thalassaemia has excellent outcome ensuring above 90% transfusion free life. This is a landmark moment for our health system. This procedure should be encouraged to transfusion dependent thalassaemia patients,” said hematology professor and BMT physician, Rajib De, who conducted the procedure.
BMT costs anything between 12 to 15 lakh in private hospitals. Govt bore all the cost apart from some medications not available in its stock. The girl will be discharged on Friday. “This is a curative procedure for thalassaemia. We are now conducting three to four BMT procedures monthly on patients with other blood disorders also,” said professor Tuphan Kanti, hematology head.
NRSMCH is the first public hospital to start BMT procedures and has conducted 117 procedures so far. Medical College Hospital is the only other government facility that conducts BMT. “Ours is a modular BMT unit and we will aim to conduct more such procedures in future,” said Pit Baran Chakraborty, principal NRSMCH.
De said thalassaemia management is expensive, involving regular blood transfusions, iron chelation therapy to manage iron overload, and other supportive treatments, imposing significant financial burden on families and healthcare systems. Parents of the girl from Dankuni were happy that their daughter would no longer need transfusions.