Parents and caretakers of thalassaemia patients appealed to the State government to extend greater financial and logistical support for saving hundreds of precious lives.
The methods of treatment of severe thalassaemia have advanced but they come with huge financial implications for the common people, who had to undergo blood transfusion every three weeks. While wealthy people could opt for bone marrow transplantation (BMT), others had to struggle a lot and many patients were fighting a losing battle, said V. Sarath Babu, Founder of SAPTHA (Support and Awareness for People with Thalassemia) Foundation, during its third anniversary celebrations organised here on Sunday coinciding with the International Thalassaemia Day.
Meena Janeeja, who got her younger son cured of thalassaemia through BMT in Italy just a year after the world’s first BMT was performed in the western world in 1986, said she and her husband had to run from pillar to post to find effective treatment for the disease.
Though the medical field was well advanced by then to give a new lease of life to her son, who was barely a year-old, they were absolutely clueless about whom to approach and where. They could finally manage with great difficulty to get BMT done by a team of doctors led by Prof. Guido Lucarelli, who pioneered Allogeneic BMT in which stem cells are taken from donors mostly the patient’s siblings.
She said blood transfusion continues to be a major challenge as it was beyond the reach of common people. But for the help extended by SAPTHA Foundation, darkness would engulf many lives, she observed.
