Nearly four million donors are on the bone marrow registry in the US, there are roughly 1,500 registered with Asian Indian Donor registry at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Also, not a single unrelated bone marrow transplant has been performed in India. Bone marrow transplants are options for patients with Aplastic Anaemia (bone marrow failure), blood cancers like Leukemia, Lymphomas and Myelomas and Thalassemia.

The CME in Bone Marrow Transplantation, organised by Manipal Hospital in collaboration with the University of Minnesota physicians, discussed the need to create awareness on bone marrow transplants on Sunday.

Currently, patients with bone marrow disease and failure are tackling the problem with repeated blood transfusions, which leads to complications such as high iron content leading to multi-organ failure in the long run, said Dr Ashish Dixit, Department of Haematology, Medical Oncology and Transplant of Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre at Manipal Hospital. The cost of maintenance is high and it is a cumbersome process, he said.

In India only related transplants (donors being siblings) are done, but there is only a 25 percent chance of related donors being matched becoming donors.  However with unrelated transplants risks are higher resulting mortality, graft vs host disease, said Dr Ashish.

Around 40,000 bone marrow transplants take place in a year in the US while in India it is only 400 a year. The prevalence of Thalassmia is high in India with a whopping 10,000 fresh cases a year.