CHENNAI: This year, Chennai-based volunteers paid for the medicines and other supplies for at least six children who underwent bone marrow transplants (BMT). These children, from economically deprived families, were referred to private hospitals from the Government Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children, Egmore, as the institute doesn’t have infrastructure for the procedure. Most of them hail from small villages in Tamil Nadu.
A woman from a village in Kallakurichi district, who lost her 10-year-old daughter to aplastic aneamia, a rare condition in which the body stops producing enough new blood cells, had to sell her cattle, among other things, to pay for her daughter’s treatment. “Government hospitals in the district don’t have high-end medical facilities, so my daughter was referred to the Government Children’s Hospital in Chennai. The doctors there said she would recover with a bone marrow transplant, so we agreed to the procedure and were referred to a private hospital for the surgery,” said Suganya (name changed), the mother of the deceased.
“Though the surgery was covered under the Chief Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme, we had to pay for other expenses such as drugs and transport. We even sold our goats as my husband is a daily wage labourer and we couldn’t afford the expenses. A volunteer from Chennai noticed our plight and helped buy drugs for my daughter. But she died three months after the surgery,” said an inconsolable Suganya.
Express spoke to a few parents from various districts who had similar stories. In the government sector, bone marrow transplants are only performed at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH), which was inaugurated in 2018. But doctors from government hospitals say the RGGGH doesn’t have the infrastructure to cater to children before and after the surgery as the equipment needed for children is different from adults.
The volunteers who helped these children say the cost of the drugs varies for each child. When contacted, Dr C Ravichandran, head of hematology, Cancer Department, Institute of Child Health and Children’s Hospital, said, “We have sent a proposal to set up a bone marrow transplant unit at the institute, and are positive that we will get it soon.”
Spongy tissue that contains stem cells
Bone marrow is a spongy tissue inside bones that contains stem cells. Stem cells can develop into red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. BMT can be performed on eligible patients with leukemia, aplastic aneamia, sickle cell anaemia, multiple myeloma and blood disorders