CHENNAI: Jeevan Blood Bank plans to create a donor registry for bone marrow transplants and help patients undergo transplants for less than `3 lakh.
At the moment, other players in the same space tend to charge twice or thrice the amount to match, extract and provide a viable transfusion. “This is probably the only stem cell bank in the not-for-profit sector that has an advanced HLA lab that can handle up to 300 samples a day,” said Dr P Srinivasan, chairman of Jeevan Blood Bank and Research Centre.
Finding a stem cell match from an adult aged 20-40 years can be quite a task, because ethnicity plays a big role in determining whether a person can be a donor or not. This is why Indians living abroad often get in touch with Indian registries to find a match. “We are looking to get 50,000 donors before 2020 or sooner. One policy that we are insistent on is that we will enlist only those who have donated blood or platelets at least twice in the last 2 years, because world over people registering and then refusing to come forward for donation is quite prevalent,” he added.
While most of Jeevan’s work is offered at extremely low or equitable costs, this is one service that takes a lot of expenditure to process and handle, “We have seed money from grants that will go a long way in reducing the cost, but we can do a lot more if the customs duty on imported reagents and the VAT component are worked on by the respective governments,” said Dr P Srinivasan.