Kochi: Though youngsters are coming forward to donate blood stem cells, lack of awareness and apprehensions of the general public are still major issues affecting stem cell donation.
Despite being a 100 per cent safe method, people are still apprehensive over donation. Thousands of patients die every year due to lack of a matching donor.
A get together of stem cell donors in the state was held on Sunday in which medical experts explained the challenges and scope of donation. The meet was organised by DATRI, a national-level stem cell donors registry.
According to Raghu Rajagopal, co-founder and CEO of DATRI, the number of patients suffering from fatal blood disorders was on the rise.
He added that they had received 975 requests for stem cell donors from across the country this year alone. He stressed the need to have more people coming forward to register themselves for donating stem cells.
Addressing the gathering, Dr. Neeraj Sidharthan, associate professor of the Department of Medical Oncology and Haematology at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi said that as per the statistics of the World Marrow Organisation, stem cell donation is a 100 per cent safe practice.
“The trend of matching donors backing out in the final stage is very depressing. We’ve seen several cases where persons who come forward initially back out in the final phase. This will have an emotional impact on patients worsening their health condition,” he said.
According to him, the possibility of saving a patient with fatal blood diseases through marrow transplant is 60 per cent. But it depends on the stage of the disease.
Explaining the problems in finding a matching donor, he said, “The probability of finding a genetic match within the family is only 25 per cent and the probability of finding an unrelated donor is one in 10, 000 to one on two million.”
During the function, 13 stem cell donors from the state were honoured with mementoes by Adv. K. A Jaleel, additional advocate general.
