KOTA KINABALU: Likas Women and Children Hospital is expected to conduct its first bone marrow transplant for a Thalassemia child in Sabah by the end of this year.
Hospital director Dr Tan Bee Hwai said of 275 applicants, they had yet decide on any candidate for the procedure.
"We possibly choose younger child as he or she will receive donor's bone marrow better with less complication from the surgery.
"Each transplant costs between RM25,000 and RM35,000 which is mostly subsidised by government,"he told New Straits Times yesterday.
Dr Tan added that the state would send five Thalassemia children annually to Hospital Kuala Lumpur for the procedure.
Bone marrow transplant is a treatment that can cure the inherited blood disorder, but it can be done subjected to the availability of donors.
To date, Malaysia records 5,650 Thalassemia cases and 1,454 of them are from Sabah. Almost 80 per cent cases here are categorised as Thalassemia major patients who have to undergo blood transfusion every month.
As the Likas hospital receives most affected children from different districts in state and thus has to work extra hard in ensuring adequate blood supply for them all year long.
When asked whether the state is able to achieve zero new Thalassemia cases in future, the director is optimistic on the vision as the Finland has done so.
He added that Health Ministry had been actively conducting health awareness to advice public to do blood screening before they even fall in love or get married.
For expecting mothers, the hospital provides chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and amniocentesis as prenatal diagnostic procedures to detect the severity of Thalassemia traits of the babies in wombs.
"Nowadays, parents who had requested for the tests opt to terminate the pregnancy after considering the consequences of what their offspring may face in future," he added.
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