One in three Canadians needing bone and marrow transplant die for lack of an appropriate match, statistics show. A national cord blood bank could arrest the trend.
'Fifty or more people each year we're losing because we can't find a donor,' said Dr. John Doyle, who heads the Bone and Marrow Transplant Program at the Hospital for Sick Children.The increasing number of non-Caucasian patients risk being unable to find a match within the pool of largely Caucasian donors, Doyle said.
'So when we're looking at a child of mixed heritage … the ability to accept a mismatch becomes important and in that setting cord blood becomes a donor source.'
Beverly Campbell of Canadian Blood Services said plans were underway to establish a national public cord blood bank as early as next year. First, the agency must present a business case to its 'funders' - the provincial and territorial governments.
She estimates it could cost almost $5 million to set up and an additional $2 million each year to run.
Such a bank, Doyle said, must find also find a way of bringing in more ethnically diverse donors if it hopes to serve the needs of Canada's multicultural patients.
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Outside of Montreal and Edmonton, most cord blood collection in the country is done commercially, with parents paying upwards of $1,000 in annual fees to store their child's cord blood for their exclusive use.
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Because Canada lacks a national, taxpayer-supported cord blood bank, most cord blood used for transplants there comes from foreign countries.
Source-Medindia
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