Vadodara’s first unrelated blood stem cell donor donates his blood stem cells to fight blood cancer
Medical science is touching new heights day by day with new inventions and techniques for the patients. Blood stem cell is one such way which proves to be life saver for the patients suffering from severe blood disorders. Nowadays lots of people are coming forward to donate their stem cell to save the life in need.
Vadodara the city of heritage and culture now has another reason to rejoice with its first blood stem cell donor- Jay Mehta. The 24 year old working professional becomes the first unrelated blood stem cell donor from the city.
For patients suffering from severe blood disorders like Thalassemia, blood cancer etc., the only hope of cure is a blood stem cell transplant from a donor. Only 25% of these patients are likely to find a match within the family. The remaining 75% have to depend on unrelated donors. The fact is that, only 1 in 10,000 to 1 over a million is the probability of finding an unrelated genetically matched blood stem cell donor.
Therefore, the only possibility of giving a new lease of life to people suffering from fatal blood disorders is to increase the number of donors.
Jay registered himself as a donor at DATRI when a patient and his family were actively searching for a match in 2017. However, he was not a match for that patient and instead, became a match for another patient. "I personally feel satisfied that I have done something to save humanity. It’s a great feeling that my stem cell helps someone to live. I appeal the others to come forward and registered themselves as donors to save lives" says, Jay.
DATRI, meaning ‘donation’ in Sanskrit, was co-founded by Raghu Rajagopal, Dr. Nezih Cereb and Dr. Soo Young Yang, in 2009. With just 3000 donors registered during the initial years, today, the registry has over 3,35,000 donors registered. Through the registry, many families got their loved ones back by the kind act of hundreds of donors. It has facilitated 374 donations including 53 donations for international patients. DATRI has 24,739 registered blood stem cell donors from Gujarat and as many as 39 people from Gujarat have donated their blood stem cells to revive the life of an ailing person.
“There are two ways to donate blood stem cells; A peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) collection is where blood stem cells are collected from the circulating blood. This is a 4-5 hours outpatient procedure and similar to the platelet donation. The other method to donate is a bone marrow harvest. Both the donation methods are carried out by expert doctors and utmost care is given to both donors and patients,” said Jalpa Sukhanandi from Datri and the person behind the first ever donation from Vadodara.
DATRI is India’s largest adult unrelated blood stem cell donor’s registry. DATRI works with 19 collection centers and serviced 80 transplant centers worldwide. It is a registered member of WMDA and is listed in the Global Search Programme (BMDW).
