Blood stem cells from an unrelated donor helped cure Paul Surya, 19, of Kanyakumari of leukaemia. Surya, who will be starting college next year, fought back tears as he thanked his donor, Amit Mohinte of Bengaluru.

Surya was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia when he was 17, and none of his three siblings’ blood stem cells matched his.

He underwent a transplant in 2016 after the match was found through DATRI Blood Stem Cell Donors Registry.

This was a classic case of stem cells of family members not matching the patient’s and needing to find an unrelated donor match for treatment, said Raghu Rajagopal, Chief Executive Officer, DATRI Blood Stem Cell Donors Registry, in an event at Adyar Cancer Institute (WIA) here.

TG Sagar, Director, Cancer Institute, said that while Surya’s case had a happy ending, there are thousands of patients who are awaiting matching donors. It is not always possible to find a match from within the family as the probability of a match is around 1 in 4.

“At a time when the demand for such treatments is on the rise, we need more unrelated blood stem cell donors,” he added.

Demand-supply gap

Rajagopal agreed that demand for blood stem cells for treating blood-related diseases such as leukaemia and Thalassemia is on the rise.

The DATRI Rregistry alone gets about 1,000 requests for stem cell transplants every year. “But there is not enough supply,” he said.

DATRI has 2.86 lakh registered volunteers and facilitated 306 blood stem cell donations.

Though the numbers are growing, the challenges are the low awareness level and a high back-out rate, at 40 per cent. To decrease the number of people backing out, Rajagopal said the process for consent has been made more stringent in the past two years through counselling.

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