KOCHI: One of the major setbacks for the healthcare sector during the pandemic was the inability to hold blood stem cell donation camps. These camps are a great relief for patients suffering from major diseases like thalassemia and blood cancer, as blood stem cell transplant is their only option.
Due to Covid, no face-to-face registration drive could be done, said Sumati Misra, head of counselling and transplant centre management of DATRI — India’s largest unrelated blood stem cell donors registry. It has a database of more than four-and-a-half lakh potential blood stem cell donors currently.
Sumati said due to the inability to hold campaigns, recruitment of new potential donors to the stem-cell registry has substantially reduced. The registration of donors was more than 15,000 in the previous years, which came down to 4,000 in 2020 and 150 in 2021.
Due to Covid, many doctors and patients were hesitant to do blood stem cell transplants and hence, the number of requests for matched donors also declined.
Niya Fathima is an eight-year-old girl hailing from Ambalavayal in Wayanad district. She is the only child of Muhammed Niyas and Sainaba and was diagnosed with thalassemia major six months after her birth. The only option the family has is a blood stem cell transplant and they have been waiting for a matching blood stem cell donor from DATRI’s database. They checked the match with the parents, but it was only matching half. When Sainaba was three-months pregnant with her second baby, the embryo was tested and found chances of similar illness and was aborted.
“In 20 or 21 days, Niya is taken to Government Medical College Hospital in Kozhikode for blood transfusion. Once the matching donor is ready, the transplant can be done,” says Niya’s father, a driver. His wife Sainaba was a lab technician and quit the job to take care of the child.
In a similar situation is 40-year-old Abhilash Kumar from Ranni in Pathanamthitta district. He had been working as civil engineer in a private organisation in New Delhi and returned to his hometown in August 2021 after being diagnosed with Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), where the bone marrow fails to produce healthy blood stem cells. His only brother’s blood stem cells were checked and found to be not matching.
“Currently, I am taking injections for chemotherapy and awaiting a matching unrelated blood stem cell donor through DATRI. In a nearby camp organised by DATRI, the blood stem cells of my cousins were also collected by the volunteers, but none of them were matching mine,” said Abhilash.
DATRI officials said they started Zoom meetings, webinars etc. Though the number of potential blood stem cell donors registering for donation has reduced, they have more than four-and-a-half lakh potential blood stem cell donors in the database. There are over 2,700 patients in their registry who do not have any unrelated matches as of now and are still waiting to get a second chance at life by searching for that one in a million potential blood stem cell donor who could give them a life. However, due to the pandemic many patients are finding it difficult to find their matching unrelated blood stem cell donors.
“Instead of going for big drives, we are focusing on smaller campaigns to avoid crowding. All possible care is taken to ensure safety of the team as well as the potential blood stem cell donors. All government approvals are taken before any drive is executed. With offices reopening, we have started doing corporate and college drives. We also have an online option through which people can register on our website and when we go to a corporate or a college, we share a link on which people can register instead of coming to the registration desk,” said Sumati.
How to donate
Those who are willing to join DATRI’s lifesaving mission and donate their blood stem cells can contact Aby Sam John, head of Donor Recruitment & Counselling (Kerala & Maharashtra), DATRI Blood Stem Cell Donors Registry at 7397772455, or email to aby@datri.org or check the
website www.datri.org