BENGALURU: A month ago, a 10-year-old boy, Sam, got a life-saving bone marrow transplant from a German donor after his parents had to scour the Indian bone marrow registry with no luck in finding a match. The number of donors on the Indian bone marrow registry is just three lakh compared to the German registry, which has 75 lakh, and the US, which has one crore donors registered. Due to such shortcomings, parents look up to their child’s siblings to donate or doctors resort to half-match donors where the parents themselves donate but are only a 50 per cent match.
Sam, a 10-year-old boy from Kolar was recently evaluated for bleeding from the nose and gums. Upon examining his bone marrow, doctors confirmed that he had aplastic anaemia and his only chance of survival was a bone marrow transplant. He did not have a matching donor available and he continued to have recurrent bleeding and fever.
Doctors frantically searched for a donor in all the Indian registries and finally found a donor in the German registry. This donor was willing to donate bone marrow (taken from the blood in the hip) rather than peripheral blood stem cells (taken from the vein of the forearm). Four weeks later the boy fully recovered and was discharged.
Suresh B, Sam’s father, a daily wager at Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML), a Kolar PSU, told The New Indian Express, “We have an ESI card and hence we could pay the bill worth `10 lakh. My wife is a homemaker and I am the sole breadwinner. Sam’s brother is only seven years old and is not a match. We would get Sam platelet infusions every week. According to the rules, after a year, we will be able to contact this German donor and thank him.”