Safdarjung Hospital starts Bone Marrow Transplant facility after AIIMS

Centre-run Safdarjung Hospital on Wednesday started Bone Marrow Transplant facility here. The much awaited Bone marrow transplant unit was inagurated jointly by Medical Superintendent Dr. B.L Sherwal and OSD Dr. Vandana Talwar.

“Opening of a Bone marrow transplant (BMT) unit at Safdarjung hospital, one of the prime central government hospital, would provide a big relief for all the poor patients. Earlier in Delhi, only AIIMS offered this facility in a government set up for patients of blood cancer and other cancers”, said Medical Superintendent Dr. Sherwal.

The hospital said that Safdarjung Hospital is the first central government hospital where BMT facility will be available at a negligible cost to the patient against a cost of 10-15 lakhs in private hospitals.

Talking about the transplant, Dr Kaushal Kalra, HOD Medical Oncology, said that Bone Marrow Transplant is a process where the blood or marrow of a healthy donor replaces unhealthy blood forming cells (stem cells) of the patient with healthy stem cells which later form red blood cells, white blood cells.

The Bone marrow transplant may use cells from own body (autologous transplant) or from a donor (allogeneic transplant). This is done in transplant eligible patients and is an essential treatment procedure especially in blood cancer, lymphoma, multiple myeloma patients and some congenital diseases.

The transplant will be performed by the teams of Medical Oncology under Dr Kaushal kalra and Dr Mukesh Nagar, Hematology under Dr J M Khunger and Dr Sumita Chaudhry at the hospital.