An Ahmedabad-based NGO
Sankalp-CIMS Centre has helped perform 207 Bone Marrow Transplants for children with Thalassemia from across the country.
BMT eliminates the need for regular blood transfusions for such children helping them lead normal lives.
Sankalp-CIMS Centre for Paediatric BMT in Ahmedabad has helped children with Thalassemia from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab.
The centre started under the guidance of Dr Lawrence Faulkner, an expert on transplantation for Thalassemia, and did its first transplant in April 2017. The centre set up at CIMS Hospital to provide this treatment on a not-for-profit basis also found support from Dr Faulkner’s organisation – Cure2Children.
The efforts are also supported by donor contributions.
The centre claims that of the 207 children who underwent transplants 87% were completely cured with no post-transplant complications including GVHD (rejection).
Doctors said that 6% of their patients died and the process did not succeed in 5% of the children since they could not successfully engraft the marrow that they received.
Of the 169 patients who received transplants from fully matched related donors, 92% are fully cured. The centre also performed haplo-identical transplants with partially matched family donors and of 39 patients, 70% were fully cured with no complications.