BBCI conducts northeast’s 1st bone marrow transplant on a child

GUWAHATI: Dr B. Borooah Cancer Institute (BBCI), Guwahati, has conducted the first successful Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) on a child in northeast India. The 16-year-old patient from Meghalaya was discharged on Friday.
The child underwent a matched-sibling donor allogeneic stem cell transplantation or BMT, doctors said, and added that the patient was suffering from severe aplastic anaemia (SAA).Assistant professor of hemato-oncology, Asif Iqbal, said the donor was the patient's 19-year-old elder brother who was found to be a perfect match. "SAA is a disorder of the bone marrow where the normal blood forming tissue (hematopoietic cells) are replaced by fats resulting in inability of the bone marrow to produce sufficient blood cells," said Iqbal.
"He was discharged from the hospital today and we are announcing that the procedure was successful. The patient underwent transplantation on July 8," BBCI spokesperson Manigreeva Krishnatreya, told TOI.
The boy will, however, remain under close watch and be on treatment for another couple of months, he said.
Professor Munlima Hazarika, head of the medical oncology department, said that in India, the average cost of a matched sibling donor BMT in patients with severe anaemia costs around 15 lakh. BBCI, a government facility, however, informed that the total cost of treatment, including pre-transplant evaluation, was Rs 6 lakh.
Doctors said, on an average, 200 patients from the northeast travel outside the region for BMT every year, but due to various reasons only about 50 of them undergo the procedure. "In 2019, more than 300 patients travelled from the northeast to various parts of the country for BMT," Hazarika added. BBCI director Amal Chandra Kataki said that the BMT centre at BBCI has successfully performed six transplants on adults since its inception, but the success achieved in the case of a child was a major breakthrough.
"A dedicated centre for hematolymphoid malignancies and pediatric oncology is being planned at BBCI under the Prime Minister’s Development Initiative of North East. These developments should provide the much needed facilities for expensive treatments like BMT and make them readily available and at affordable costs for the people of NE," Kataki said. The BMT centre at BBCI conducted the first allogeneic stem cell transplantation of the northeastern region earlier this year. The BMT unit of the BBCI was opened in July, 2021 to cater to the needs of the people of the region, Kataki said.