City docs’ first success in complex treatment

Varanasi: With the newly established Bone Marrow Transplant and Stem Cell Research Centre at Banaras Hindu University becoming functional, the city doctors successfully performed the first autologous bone marrow transplantation on a female patient with multiple myeloma (blood cancer) recently.
“I am glad to announce that the first autologous bone marrow transplantation has been successfully performed on a female patient at BMT-SRC by Dr Kailash Kumar Gupta and his team,” said the BHU vice-chancellor Prof Rakesh Bhatnagar while talking to reporters on Monday.
The 12-bedded BMT-SRC is equipped with the state-of-the-art facility having HEPA filtered air and modern equipment, said the BHU VC. The centre is equipped with the latest equipment for flow cytometry for patient care and research and X-ray-based blood irradiator, first of its kind in the country which is capable of irradiation of blood and its products. The centre also has three stem cell research labs.
The VC said that the first bone marrow transplantation was done under the guidance of Dr Rahul Bhargava from Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram. The centre aims at doing 50-60 bone marrow transplantations in a year, he said adding that the bone marrow transplantation in BHU costs one-tenth of any private hospital. The financial liability of the entire treatment has been met out from the Prime Minister’s fund, he said.
He further said that the autologous bone marrow transplantation is significant because in this process there is no need of a donor, rather the bone marrow of the patient is being used. “Hopefully we will be able to provide treatment to those ailments which presently do not have a cure, said the VC adding that every year around 20,000 bone marrow transplantations are required in the country out of which around 10% succeed. The BMT-SRC of BHU will not only prove to be a boon for the people of east UP region who have to go to Delhi, Mumbai, Madras and Vellore for advance medical treatment but it will also help the hospital in providing quality medical services for treatment of more complex diseases through hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, he added.