The first bone marrow transplantation centre in the country was opened on Sunday at Dhaka Medical College Hospital to provide better cancer treatment and extend research on cancer.
The health minister, AFM Ruhal Haque, inaugurated the centre at the new extension building of the hospital in the morning. He called all related with the centre to be very sincere.
The first bone marrow transplantation would be done at the centre on October 26, said Ruhal.
Later, in evening at a scientific seminar, a survey report was disseminated that said that about 11 per cent of total cancer patients in the country were suffering from haematological malignancy or blood cancer.
Principal investigator of the survey Baizid Khoorshid Riaz, also the DMCH extension and modernisation project director, said that they collected data from five tertiary level government hospitals and also from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib
Medical University.
The data was collected from September 1 to September 30. Only the adult population was counted under the survey, he said.
A total of 1,658 patients — both new diagnosis and follow-up patients, visited the hospital in a month and 183 of them were suffering from blood cancer.
Bimalangssu Dey, bone marrow transplantation specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in United States, said that there was no standard procedure to diagnose specific type of blood cancer in Bangladesh.
He said there were many types of haematological cancer and the treatments were also different.
Cancer experts in the country follow different method to find out the types of cancer, he said, adding that there should be a standard diagnosis method.
The health minister, however, said that they should sit down all together to agree on a standard method.
Health services director general Khandaker M Shefayetullah said that the Directorate General of Health Services would give priority to the centre despite fund crisis.
Through the bone marrow transplantation, damaged bone marrow is replaced with healthy bone marrow stem cells, said experts.
The replacement of bone marrow, the soft, spongy tissue inside bones, is needed to treat different types of deadly cancer and anaemia including leukaemia, lymphomas such as Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, and aplastic anaemia and immune-deficiency disorders.
Among others, DMCH director Mostafizur Rahman was present.
-With New Age input
