With the country witnessing 20,000 children born with Thalassemia major, a life-threatening disorder every year, India needs to build a bigger registry of bone marrow doners, a noted expert today said.

Speaking to reporters, Dr Sunil Bhat, Senior Consultant and Head of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant at Narayana Health City here, said Talassemia is a rare genetic blood disorder wherein, the body fails to produce enough red cells. These patients need lifelong blood transfusion and life span is very short. Bone Marrow Transplant can give rebirth to such patients but in India the number of doners were too low to tackle such rare diseases, he said. Dr Bhat said NHC had successfully treated four Sri Lankan children suffering from Thalassemia major by recently sourcing matching bone marrow cells from unrelated donors across the world.

The transplants was done at Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre at NHC. The patients included a 15-month-old baby Nethumi, a 4 year-old toddler Suwini, 5-year-old Purna and 10-year-old Mithun. Sri Lanka faces several challenges while dealing with complex cases, especially those who don't have any family matched donors for transplant and NHC offered them help. ''Bone marrow transplant is the curative option and hence the families of the four Sri Lankan children decided to opt for this treatment modality,'' he added.

NHC has been most sought-after health destination for both national and international patients. It is a leading referral centre for wide array of treatments including bone marrow transplant. He said the transplant costs Rs 12 lakh in case of related doner and if it is from unrelated donor the cost may go up to Rs 20 lakh.