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Country's first bone marrow transplant facility launched

Staff Correspondent
Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) yesterday launched the country's first bone marrow/stem cell transplant facility, taking a giant leap in treating cancer patients.
Situated on the 9th floor of the DMCH-2, the highly specialised and technology-dependent medical unit will be able to bring down the transplant costs to about Tk 5 lakh.
Depending on the patient's state, it takes about Tk 10-12 lakh in India and nearly Tk 1 crore in the US and Singapore.
The unit will eventually open opportunities to cure thalassaemia (both major and minor), several types of bone cancers, and other non-malignant and non-cancerous diseases, the unit head's Prof MA Khan told The Daily Star.
"Although there is no official statistics on the number of people needing bone marrow transplants, we reckon that there are several lakh, many ofwhom go abroad fortreatment/hesaid.
The unit was set up with technical support from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), United States, which for the past one year, provided the education and training to physicians, technologists and nurses of the facility.
Bimalangshu R Dey, a Bangladeshi doctor working as an assistant professor at the Department of Medicine at MGH, was one of the key figures who arranged the deal between the Bangladesh government and MGH.
He said, "For the first six months, the unit will only try the simpler methods (autologous stem cell transplant). Patients who have multiple myeloma and lymphoma (two forms of cancer) will be treated at present. ”
Autologous transplant is the process when the patient's own stem cells are used while allogeneic transplant is when stem cells of another person are used.
Bimalangshu said about 80 to 90 percent of patients born with thalassaemia major can be fully cured if the transplant is done at the right time.
The unit started off with 10 patients. Physicians started collecting stem cells on October 18 and transplantations will begin in about one week.
"However, for the time
being, bone marrow transplants of only three patients will be conducted at a time," informed MA Khan.
The unit has five sterilised cabins for the transplants. Patients usually need to spend several weeks in the cabins after the transplants, he informed.
Inaugurating the unit, Health Minister AFM Ruhal Haque urged physicians and technicians to maintain constant communication with MGH to keep the facility "state-of-the-art".
The minister also urged affluent people to donate for the unit so that financially insolvent people can be provided treatment for free.