The first bone marrow transplantation centre in the country will be opened in Dhaka Medical College Hospital today. The health minister, AFM Ruhal Haque, will inaugurate the centre at the new extension building of the hospital. Massachusetts General Hospital, the teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School in the United States, has provided the technical support.
The institute will also train physicians and nurses at the centre, the DMCH extension and modernisation project director, Baizid Khurshid Riaz, told New Age on Saturday.
He said that they had already dealt with five patients for transplantation and the process had begun. They would initially transplant bone marrow collected from patient’s own body, he said.
‘We have collected stem cells from the body of three of them. We hope that we can transplant stem cells in one of the patient named Jamal, 28, on October 26,’ he said.
Baizid said that they were yet to decide the transplantation cost. ‘As the country has no experience in bone marrow transplantation, we cannot estimate the charge. But defiantly the charge will very low compared with what it costs abroad.’
As initially the centre gets assistance including medicine and equipment from Massachusetts General Hospital and Global Health, it can do the transplantation almost free for about three months, he said.
After that, the patients would need to pay for medicines which are ‘very expensive,’ he said. ‘We will decide the cost after sitting with the ministry officials.’
There are five cabins designated for bone marrow transplantation patients at the centre, said he said.
Although there are no dependable data on how many people in Bangladesh need bone marrow transplantation, physicians said that the number was high.
Replacement of the bone marrow — the soft, spongy tissue inside bones — is needed to treat different types of deadly cancer and anaemia patients.
-With New Age input
