TUHIN SHUBHRA ADHIKARY

When Rejoan Rashid Fahad was admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital over a decade ago with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of blood cancer, few believed he would survive.

But he turned out to be one of the fortunate ones. In March 2014, DMCH -- the country’s first hospital to introduce the highly sophisticated and costly bone marrow transplant (BMT) procedure -- began offering the treatment.

Fahad became the seventh patient to undergo the transplant in October that year, receiving the procedure at half the fixed cost, which was already far lower than what it would have cost abroad.

He made a full recovery.

Now 30 years old and working in Saudi Arabia for the last five years, Fahad returned to the BMT unit yesterday -- the very day it resumed operations after a long break -- rekindling hope that more patients like him will get a new lease on life through treatment there.

“It’s a coincidence. Returning home after a long time, I came here to meet the doctors and nurses who gave me a second life. I am so grateful to them. It feels good to see the unit resume operations. I hope many more people like me will receive treatment here,” Fahad told this correspondent.

BMT UNIT RESUMES AFTER LONG SUSPENSION

DMCH authorities said they have begun preparations for transplantation, which is expected to resume within two to three weeks. Among government hospitals, only DMCH has this facility, while a few private hospitals and CMH also offer the service.

Bone marrow transplant is a medical procedure in which damaged or diseased bone marrow -- the soft, spongy tissue inside the bones -- is replaced with healthy stem cells. These stem cells can either come from the patient (autologous transplant) or from a donor (allogeneic transplant).

The treatment can be used for several types of blood cancer, aplastic anaemia, thalassaemia, and other related disorders.

Bangladesh’s first BMT unit was established in October 2013 at the new DMCH building, following the model of the US’ Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) of Harvard Medical School.

However, the procedure was suspended after the new DMCH building was converted into a dedicated Covid hospital in May 2020, when the pandemic hit the country.

Although the service briefly resumed in 2023, many of the necessary equipment were found to be non-functional, and the higher infection rate led to another suspension, doctors said.

So far, 60 bone marrow transplants have Prof

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