BHUBANESWAR: With blood disorders like haemophilia emerging as major public health concerns, the Odisha government has decided to procure high-end medical equipment and set up sophisticated laboratories for early detection of carriers and prenatal diagnosis.
Since haemophilia is a hereditary disease and may affect future generations, the government plans to make screening of pregnant women, whose family members are haemophiliacs, mandatory through chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis to check the carrier status and whether the foetus is affected with haemophilia.
A health official said women are asymptomatic carriers of hemophilia. Screening and confirmatory tests are essential for early diagnosis. This will help prevent the future generations from contracting the genetic disease, he said.
The state government has already made factor concentrates available free of cost to persons suffering from haemophilia. The highly purified factor VIII and IX concentrates, which are considered the safest and purest treatment options for haemophilia, are now available in all medical colleges and seven district hospitals with the maximum patients.
Odisha is the first state to include factor concentrate and factor VII (required for haemophilia patients with inhibitors) in the essential drug list and has been procuring the life-saving drugs on a regular basis. Urging haemophilia patients to take advantage of it, head of the department of clinical haematology at SCB MCH Prof Rabindra Kumar Jena said factor replacement should be done regularly to maintain the effective factor level to avoid any bleeding and ensure a normal and productive life.
“Haemophiliacs with high level of factor can lead a normal, healthy and productive life. Apart from regular checkup for development of inhibitors (anti factor anti-bodies) followed by proper management with suitable therapy or desensitisation, the patients should also avail physiotherapy and vocational rehabilitation,” he said.
Recently, the haemophilia treatment centre (HTC) at the clinical haematology department of SCB MCH has completed a three-year twinning programme in collaboration with international haemophilia experts from Detroit, which was supported by the World Hemophilia Federation (WFH).
Doctors, nursing officers, laboratory technicians, physiotherapists and paramedical staff have been educated and trained by global experts and it has helped in improving the holistic healthcare services of hemophilia patients. The state has around 1,200 registered haemophilia patients and 50 per cent of them are from Cuttack alone.