Kochi: Thanks to a 55-year-old German national, a 16-year-old Kerala girl suffering from an advanced stage of leukaemia or bone marrow cancer has got a new lease on life after healthy stem cells donated by him were transfused into her.
“This is perhaps one of the rarest transnational stem cell donation cases in the country. As there was no matching stem cells from among more than 70,000 listed in a registry in India, we sought help from German-based international registry DKMS,” Neeraj Sidharthan, head of stem cell transplant unit at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre in Kochi, said.
“We have been told that this person was the only one whose stem cells matched with the girl’s,” he said.
After receiving the healthy stem cells from the 55-year-old German man, the girl has been declared free of the life-threatening ailment.
“She comes to me for routine check-up[s] and she is doing perfectly fine,” said Sidharthan.
Recalling the case, Sidharthan said the girl had relapsed acute myeloid leukaemia and her chances of survival were slim.
“We suggested allogeneic stem cell transplantation, or transfer of stem cells from a healthy person, to save the patient. It’s easy since the donor stem cells come either from a sibling or parents. However, in this girl’s case, it did not happen,” said the doctor.
Once the donor had been found, the girl was admitted to the institute for pre-transplant tests and administration of chemotherapy drugs to prevent side effects, since the stem cells were to come from an international donor of the opposite sex.
The healthy cells were harvested from the donor and airlifted from Dusseldorf to Cologne in Germany and later to Kochi via Abu Dhabi.
Finally, the donated stem cells were transfused into the girl by a team of doctors led by Sidharthan.
Sidharthan pointed out that only around 100,000 people out of a population of 1.25 billion have signed up for bone marrow donation in India, as against 10.5 million in the US. This is despite the fact that it is a simple and painless procedure much like blood donation.
“The need of the hour is for a massive awareness programme for stem cell donation. The donor can be out of the hospital in four hours. If this happens, precious lives can be saved,” Sidharthan added.
