BHUBANESWAR: With blood disorders like hemophilia becoming major public health concerns, the Odisha government has decided to provide high-end medical equipment and sophisticated laboratory facilities for early detection of carriers and prenatal diagnosis.
Since hemophilia is a hereditary disease and may affect future generations, the government plans to make the screening of pregnant women, whose family members are hemophiliacs, mandatory through chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis to check the carrier status and whether the foetus is affected with hemophilia.
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 generation from suffering from this genetic disease, he said.
The state government has already made factor concentrates available free of cost to persons suffering from hemophilia. The highly purified factor VIII and IX concentrates, which are considered the safest and purest treatment options for hemophilia, are now available in all medical colleges and seven district hospitals with maximum hemophilia patients.
Odisha is the first state to include factor concentrate and factor VII (required for hemophilia patients with inhibitors) in the essential drug list and has been procuring the life-saving drugs on a regular basis without compromising the quality.
Urging hemophilia patients to take advantage of the facilities available, 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.
"Hemophiliacs 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 hemophilia treatment centre (HTC) at the clinical hematology department of SCB MCH has completed a three-year twinning programme in collaboration with international hemophilia experts from Detroit, which was supported by the World Hemophilia Federation (WFH).
The 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 1200 registered hemophilia patients and 50 per cent of them are from Cuttack alone.