Pinky Ghelani: Here is why you should not throw away your baby’s umbilical cord

When Pinky Ghelani gave birth to her first child four years ago, like happens in many delivery rooms across the country, her doctor discarded her daughter’s umbilical cord together with other ‘waste’ that goes into the incinerator after child birth.

Unknown to her then, something precious, something that might have been her daughter’s health insurance in future, had just been lost. Forever.

You see, a new born’s umbilical cord is rich in stem cells, the building blocks of life which are abundant in its blood and tissue.

Cord blood remains in your baby’s umbilical cord once it has been cut after birth, and its stem cells can be used to regenerate bone marrow to treat a range of blood disorders and immune system conditions such as leukaemia, anaemia, and autoimmune diseases.

“I’d heard about stem cells, but did not know enough to consider storing my child’s stem cells,” Pinky says.

About two months ago, while pregnant with her second child, Pinky bumped into a friend who works with a medical agency, and therefore knows quite a lot about this subject.

After exchanging notes on the subjects, Pinky came out “amazed and convinced” that this was the best health insurance she could take for her child.

WORTHY INVESTMENT

And so when, a few weeks later, she gave birth to her second child, instead of her doctor discarding her son’s umbilical cord, she collected the cord blood, cut a piece of the umbilical cord, washed it, and then placed them in a vial.

The blood and tissue were then labelled and packaged, and then shipped off to a stem cell laboratory in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Pinky has a 20-year agreement with Netcells Biosciences, the laboratory storing her son’s stem cells. The agreement cost her $3,000 (approximately Sh270,000), and she feels it was worth it.

“There’s no parent who wants to imagine that his or her child will seriously fall ill one day, but if there is a precaution you can take to ensure that should he or she fall sick there is a cure, why not take it?” she reasons.

She compares the step she took to taking medical insurance, an education policy, or insuring your property against damage.

“If you can insure your property, why not your children?” she asks.

In fact, the only regret that she has is that she did not take the same step when she gave birth to her first child, Ariyana, who is now four and, thankfully healthy.

Intent on creating awareness about the importance of harvesting these life-giving cells at birth, Pinky regularly gives talks in antenatal classes and other similar gatherings.

According to Dr Yvonne Holt, a general practitioner in South Africa who has specialised in transfusion medicine, though all our organs contain stem cells — whose function is to maintain and repair our organs throughout life — as we grow older, those cells become less efficient.

“Cord-derived stem cells have long, healthy telomeres (essential part of the human cells that affects how they age) which shorten as we age, resulting in lower levels of regenerative potential.”

This means that since stem cells from a baby are at the initial stages of their life span, better treatment results are achieved with these youthful cells.

Doctor Holt explains that while adult stem cells are found in many tissues in the body, they are small in number and difficult to isolate, which makes the concentrated cells in the umbilical cord blood priceless.

MIRACLE CURE

For instance, cord blood has been used in bone marrow transplants to treat numerous blood-related cancers such as leukaemia and lymphoma, and other childhood cancers where the bone marrow is damaged by high-dose chemotherapy, such as Nephroblastoma and Neuroblastoma.

Other serious disorders such as anaemia, including sickle cell anaemia, aplastic anaemia, thalassaemia and fanconi’s anaemia, as well as inherited metabolic and immune disorders, are also treatable with cord blood transplants.

“Parents choose to store these millions of valuable cells in the event that their children become ill with a condition that is treatable with stem cells,” says Dr Holt. “Your baby’s stem cells will also provide a one-in-four chance of a match for one of his or her siblings.”

However, if your child has a bone marrow disease with a genetic basis (an inherited disease), his or her stem cells cannot be used for transplantation, so doctors will have to use cells from an unaffected sibling or unrelated donor.

Doctor Holt points out that though your child might never need to use his or her stem cells, hospital statistics show that this probability increases over one’s lifetime.

“While a person’s chance of bone marrow transplant is only one in 1,700 up to age 20, this rises up to one in 200 by age 70.

“Stem cells are by no means regarded as a miracle cure to all illnesses, but provide an important source of cells to treat several life-threatening illnesses, as well as the potential to treat many more common diseases in the future as technology progresses.

“For now, it remains a valuable insurance policy you will hopefully never have to use, but stem cells may hold the key to curing and treating many diseases and conditions.”

COST IMPLICATIONS

No doubt, for many Kenyans, the only roadblock that stands in the way of them storing their children’s stem cells is affordability.

However, the price tag of obtaining bone marrow elsewhere is astronomical.

It can cost between $7,000 and $10,000 (approximately Sh630,000 and Sh900,000) to perform a bone marrow registry search without guarantee that you will find a donor, and approximately $20,000 to $30,000 (approximately Sh1.8 million to Sh2.7 million) to buy and import the cells from overseas since Kenya does not have a public stem cell bank.

That is even before you factor in the cost of carrying out the transplant.

Compared to this staggering cost, storing your child’s stem cells seems like a much cheaper option, at least for those who can afford it. This explains why an increasing number of Kenyan parents who can afford it are storing their children’s stem cells.

Doctor Praful S Patel, a gynaecologist at the Aga Khan University Hospital, makes at least one collection every fortnight.

“It is an expensive exercise, but just like health insurance, it is worth it because it can save your children’s lives,” he says.