Mumbai: Sion Hospital to expand bone marrow unit

The Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College and General Hospital LTMGH at Sion completed 104 bone marrow transplants BMT in their paediatric ward as of March 31 However considering the increasing number of patients on the waiting list the hospital has planned to expand its BMT treatment facilities It is the first civic hospital to have introduced this facility for children in 2015ldquoOur first patient was a 15yearold boy who was diagnosed with aplastic anemia His bone marrow was not producing red blood cells white blood cells and platelets 10 years on after the transplant today he is married and has a healthy childrdquo said Dr Sujata Sharma incharge division of paediatric hematology department of paediatrics Sion HospitalldquoWe have received all permissions from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC and the construction works will begin within a few weeks The expanded facility will be started on the second floor of Eknath Gaikwad Urban Health Centre located in Dharavi as the current building of Sion Hospital faces space constraints This new ward will have five BMT beds and a fourbedded stepdown room The stepdown rooms have HEPA filtration and are like ICU rooms for those undergoing the transplantrdquo informed Dr SharmaAs per the hospital authorities this new project will be funded entirely by the NGO MKH Foundation which has been working towards thalassemia eradication across the country The NGO is expected to spend approximately Rs 18 to Rs 20 crore for the projectIn a recent BMT case a 6monthold girl child with primary immunodeficiency T cell migration defect a mutation in the ARPC1B gene was transplanted successfully ldquoOnly three to five cases are reported in the literature Patients of primary immunodeficiency get admitted with recurrent life threatening infections and are likely to die of infection if not transplanted early in liferdquo informed Dr SharmaCurrent facilityThe hospital currently has only one BMT bed and four stepdown rooms At one particular time the hospital can conduct BMT of just one patient and each patient needs at least one month to 45 days for the process after which they are shifted to these stepdown roomsldquoConsidering a monthrsquos time required for the treatment ideally nearly 120 patients could have been treated so far However sometimes complications arise and the patients are required to occupy the room for more than 45 days This apart other issues such as maintenance works restrict admissions of the patients too Also we could not treat patients during the COVID19 periodrdquo explained Dr SharmaWhile there are at least seven to eight patients on the waiting list at one particular time nearly one or two patients are added per week which are emergency cases These further delays treatment access to those already on the listldquoOnce we expand we can conduct at least four to five BMTs simultaneously against just one that we do nowrdquo said Dr Radnyi Mande consultant Paediatric haematology oncology division department of Paediatrics LTMGHTransplants done at Sion HospitalTotal transplants completed 104Severe aplastic anemia 36Thalassemia 35Malignancy 21Inborn errors of immunity 07Fanconi Anemia 3Sickle Cell Anemia 1P K Deficiency 1Cost differenceWhile at BMCrun hospitals each transplant costs 10 to 12 lakh the costs go up to 25 to 40 lakh per transplant at a private hospitalNeed for bone marrow transplantsldquoAbovementioned diseases are of marrow cells And thus replacing the bone marrow with healthy HLAmatched marrow stem cells is the only permanent cure for itrdquo mentioned Dr Sharma CEO of Wadia Hospitals Dr Minnie Bodhanwala explained ldquoBone marrow transplant can be either autologous using the patientrsquos own cells for solid tumours like neuroblastoma or allogeneic from a donor Allogeneic bone marrow transplant is done to treat a variety of conditions primarily bloodrelated cancers like leukaemia noncancerous blood disorders like aplastic anaemia thalassemia immunodeficiencies like severe combined immunodeficiency WiskottAldrich syndrome and certain metabolic disordersrdquo