Marking a major milestone in India’s public health system, a State-run hospital in Odisha on Wednesday performed its 100th bone marrow transplant (BMT) free of cost.
The BMT, an expensive a medical procedure, infuses healthy blood-forming stem cells to replace damaged or diseased bone marrow.
Eight years ago, the Naveen Patnaik government established a BMT Unit at the State-run SCB Medical College and Hospital (SCBMCH) in Cuttack and fully supported the transplants, which at that time were costing ₹15-40 lakh each, depending on whether the procedure was autologous or allogenic. Moreover, the waiting period was at least one year outside Odisha.
The pioneering effort, which was subsequently followed by other States, proved to be a game changer in the health sector and altered how the private sector approached BMTs. It also led to a drastic fall in the cost of such procedures in private hospitals outside Odisha. The cost has now come down to about ₹2-5 lakh per BMT.
BMT helps patients recover from blood disorders, including acute leukaemia, thalassaemia, sickle cell disease, aplastic anaemia, and other cancerous diseases.
Like the previous 99 BMTs, the 100th case also posed a challenge to the doctors at the BMT Unit, helmed by Professor R. K. Jena, head of the SCBMCH Clinical Haematology Department and former president of the Indian Haematology Association.
Jacob Pradhan, a former Odisha MLA, was diagnosed as a stage 3 patient of multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer with comorbidities such as the destruction of multiple vertebral spines, diabetes, and dyslipidemia.
“Detailed evaluation revealed that there was satisfactory control of the multiple myeloma at the end of the chemotherapy and the patient was referred to the SCB Medical College for bone marrow transplant procedure. He was evaluated extensively as per the BMT protocol and found to be suitable for it,” Dr. Jena said
Stem cells were collected by state-of-the-art stem cell aphaeresis equipment on Tuesday and the yield was adequate. Mr. Pradhan was finally administered the stem cells on Wednesday. He will be treated by the BMT Unit for two weeks.
Sakuntala Sahoo, a 54-year-old woman from Kendrapara district, was the first person to be administered stem cells at the SCBMCH’s BMT Unit on April 4, 2014. Now, at 62, she is doing fine. The unit has so far performed BMT on five cancer patients above 65 years of age. The eldest was 74-year-old Zubar Khan, whose procedure was hailed as pathbreaking in the country. He underwent the procedure on February 2, 2015. Before this, BMT had never been conducted on person above 65 years in India.
“Blood disorder diseases exert significant socio-economic burden in our State. Thousands of patients are in need of this procedure and are not able to receive it due to many logistic challenges outside the State,” Prof. Jena said.
Odisha’s SCBMCH has become the only State government-run hospital in the country to complete the 100th BMT procedure, and has undertaken the second highest number of BMT procedures in eastern India after Tata Medical Centre, Kolkata.
On March 27, 2021, the first allogenic BMT was performed at the SCBMCH free of cost. It would have cost ₹40 lakh elsewhere. Till then, only autologous stem cell transplants had been performed at the hospital.
The BMT Unit is likely to be upgraded further with the State government embarking upon an ambitious project of transforming the SCBMCH into an ‘AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences)-Plus’ institution. The unit is prepared to conduct more allogenic and complex BMT cases if the State government allows them.
