Vijayawada: People urged to donate blood stem cells

Vijayawada: Dr Revuri Naveen on Sunday urged people to donated blood stem cells as stem cell transplant is the permanent cure for thalassemia and other blood disorders like leukaemia and aplastic anaemia.

Addressing the awareness and registration drive programme jointly organised by Saptha Foundation and DATRI Blood Stem Cell Donors Registry in at Saptha Hospital here, he said that for many suffering from fatal blood diseases like blood cancer (leukaemia, lymphoma) and thalassemia, the blood stem cell transplant is the last hope of survival.

Such patients need a donor with a matching genetic type. The probability of finding a match was only 1 in 10,000 to 1 in over a million. With such low probability, it was necessary to have a large database of willing blood stem cell donors, he said.

Chava Ravi, Andhra Pradesh coordinator of DATRI said that DATRI Blood Stem Cell Donors Registry was a not-for-profit organisation with a vision to find a willing donor for patients of Indian origin suffering from fatal blood disorders.

DATRI has registered 4,60,920 people as potential blood stem cell donors in the two Telugu states. With the support of these donors, DATRI has saved 747 lives.

According to ICMR, in India in 2010 around 1,04,239 blood and lymphatic malignancies were diagnosed, and the number was expected to increase to 1,32,574 cases per year by 2020. There were thousands of patients waiting for a blood stem cell donor.

Saptha Foundation chairmen Voggu Sarath Babu said, "We are conducting awareness camps for the last six years in Vijayawada and this was our sixth camp."

On Sunday 70 donors registered as stem cell donors by giving their swab samples.

DATRI volunteers Hari Krishna and Ravi and Saptha Foundation Dr Katragadda Prasanthi also participated.