Bangladesh performs 25th bone marrow transplant in the first-ever centre

The first-ever bone marrow transplant centre in Bangladesh has ‘successfully’ performed the 25th transplant on Sunday.

The centre-in-charge at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), Prof MA Khan, told bdnews24.com that the patient Arif was a 29 years old who has been suffering from a ‘relapsed Hodgkin's Lymphoma’, an uncommon blood cancer.

He said the patient was poor and “he needs financial support”.

The centre was inaugurated on Oct 20, 2013, on the ninth floor of the new DMCH building, which was remodelled with the help of the Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

MGH trained up its nurses and doctors while the government spent about Tk 200 million on the whole project.

The transplant began in Mar 2014, ushering in a new era in Bangladesh’s medical science and treatment.

In bone marrow transplantation, doctors replace damaged or destroyed marrow – the soft and spongy tissue inside bones – with healthy bone marrow stem cells to treat different types of blood cancer, certain genetic blood and immunity disorders like thalassemia, and severe aplastic anaemia.

There are no official data about people needing bone-marrow transplants in Bangladesh, but doctors say many go abroad for this replacement.

But the costs in Bangladesh are less than a third of what it costs abroad.

The centre is offering ‘autologous’ transplant procedure in which one’s own bone marrow is used.

It is working on introducing the ‘allogeneic’ procedure which is more critical because, in this process, the bone marrow of siblings or donors is used.