Tuesday, Apr 23, 2024 | Last Update : 01:26 PM IST
German donor gives new lease of life to Iraqi girl
As doctors in her country gave up, Banin’s family approached doctors here in India.
New Delhi: A 15-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from a rare bone marrow failure syndrome got a new lease on life after she received stem cells from an unrelated German donor. Doctors at a private hospital in Faridabad, where the girl underwent the procedure, claimed that this was the first case in Delhi NCR, where a patient suffering from of severe aplastic anemia was treated with a matched unrelated donor (MUD) stem cell transplant with donor cells from international database.
Aplastic anaemia is a condition when the patient’s body stops producing enough new blood cells which leaves the patient fatigued, and at a higher risk of infection as well as uncontrolled bleeding. The patient, Banin Mohammad Humza, would develop infections and require hospitalisation every other day, as the white blood cells, which fight against infection, were low in her body.
As doctors in her country gave up, Ms Banin’s family approached doctors here in India. “After evaluating her case, we reached the conclusion that a bone marrow transplant was the only cure,” Dr Prashant Mehta, a bone marrow transplant specialist at the Asian Institute of Medical Sciences, Faridabad said.
In Ms Banin’s case, the doctors could not find any genetically matching (HLA) donors within her family, so they searched for a suitable donor and checked the registries of donors of stem cells in India but in vain. Soon, they started looking at the registries of other countries and luckily found a donor who matched her HLA type in Germany.
“We put forth our request and the stem cells of the donor, a 25-year-old male, was harvested in Germany and shipped to India. It was then stored at minus 80 degrees celsius for two weeks before being transplanted,” said Dr Mehta.
In the weeks that followed, the patient underwent intensive monitoring. “Her body accepted the donor cells and the procedure was successfully completed. At present, she is free of the disease and the blood count has normalised. She is on follow-up care on an outpatient basis,” Dr Mehta said.
