Bengaluru: Every five minutes, someone in the country receives the shattering news that he or she has been diagnosed with blood cancer or a blood disorder. But not everyone finds blood stem cell donors to save them.
About 80,000 donor searches are made across the globe and in India every year and the response is not adequate.
Hoping to make a difference, around 300 students of RV College of Engineering registered as blood stem cell donors on Friday to mark the World Marrow Donor Day, observed on the third Saturday of September.
Mr Patrick Paul, CEO, DKMS-BMST Foundation, India, which works to raise awareness about blood stem cell transplants and registering of donors, says few Indians register as donors when compared to other ethnic groups.
“This increases the need for more Indians to register as potential stem cell donors and help save lives,” he said.
The Foundation works among students to raise awareness about the need for more donors. The foundation is one of the largest bloods stem cell donor centres in the world.
The donor helps replace unhealthy cells in patients with blood cancer or blood disorders with healthy cells. Only 30% of patients in the world find matching donors in their own family, and the rest are forced to look for an unrelated donor with similar tissue characteristics. In India a healthy adult in the 18-50 age group, weighing over 50 kg can be a donor.
Before the blood stem cell collection, the donor receives a daily injection of G-CSF for five days to build the number of stem cells in his blood stream. On donation day, the donor’s blood is collected from one arm and passed through a machine that separates the increased number of stem cells in his blood, and the remaining blood is routed back to the donor through the other arm.
