Let your child come into the world to secure the entire family

By Mayur Abhaya Srisrimal

Chennai, Oct 23 (IANS) Most of the time parents are faced with myriad decisions for their newborns. One of them is whether to preserve their baby's umbilical cord stem cells. It's a decision most parents-to-be consider, weighing the cost against the potential future benefits which might help treat certain genetic diseases and cancers that your child may get.

The first successful umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant was done 28 years ago in France, and over the last 20 years more than 40,000 patients worldwide have had umbilical cord blood transplants. In India, there is increasing awareness about cases that are successfully treated with stem cells and this has led to umbilical cord banking to be a propagated as opposed to being discarded as medical waste.

Families wanting to improve their access to stem cells resort to preserving their baby's umbilical cord blood stem cells at private stem cell banks, even though it provides only a 25 per cent chance of being a match for the siblings. Every year, approximately 100,000 units are preserved in such private banks.

Due to lack of financial support for public banking only approximately 5,000 cord blood units are available in public banks (90 per cent chance for patients in India to find a match if the inventory exceeds 250,000 units.

In the recent past, to extend the treatment for fatal blood-related conditions to the tribals suffering with Sickle Cell Anaemia, the government has also passed a bill in parliament on the necessity of large inventory of unrelated stem cell banks.

(Mayur Abhaya Srisrimal is Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, LifeCell. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at mayur.a@lifecell.in)

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