Odisha’s First Haplo-BMT Conducted At State-Run SCB Medical College & Hospital

Cuttack: Doctors of state-run SCB Medical College and Hospital here achieved another milestone by performing Odisha’s first halo allogenic bone marrow transplant (BMT) procedure at its clinical haematology department, where the state government offers BMT free of cost for both cancerous and blood diseases.

Haplo-BMT is a revolutionary life-saving procedure as it enables transplant from half-matched donors.

The recipient of the bone marrow was Sabyasachi Sahoo (19), a relapsed blood cancer patient from Kantamali in Khurda district. He was diagnosed with B-ALL (B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia) in August 2016. Since his cancer relapsed after the full chemotherapy protocol, BMT was the last option and test of his 15-year-old brother  revealed 50 per cent (5/10) match. Following which, the transplant procedure was carried out by collecting stem cell collected from his younger brother on Tuesday.

“Chance of such HLA matching with unrelated donor was a possibility but very rare. Even if it is available from the marrow registry, it was expensive (Rs 10-30 lakh). Finding suitable HLA match from the registry was beyond the reach of common man. This deprived most of the needy patients from a life-saving option. Haplo BMT can now provide a viable alternative for the patients,” said head of the clinical haematology department and BMT unit Prof Rabindra Kumar Jena.

He further said that the patient will have to undergo treatment in the BMT unit for another three weeks with irradiated blood, platelet and other supportive measures as per the standard protocol.

Notably, Odisha was the first state in the country to provide BMT entirely free of cost. “The haplo BMT is very expensive with cost varying from Rs 40-Rs 50 lakh, but this procedure was provided completely free with support of state government under Universal Free Health Care services,” he added.