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Tissue bank to come up soon in Ahmedabad Thursday, November 29, 2001

SOURCE - TIMES NEWS NETWORK
AHMEDABAD: A bit of skin from a donor or a piece of bone could make that crucial difference to a third-degree burns patient or accident victim with multiple bone breaks. But ask any patient and they'll tell you just how hard it is to get such components in an emergency.

Not anymore. On the lines of eye and blood banking, the country is all set to have its first tissue bank where one can buy bone, skin, tendon and fascia (both sheets or band of connective tissue separating or binding muscles with organs). What's more, the bank will come up in Ahmedabad!

Thanks to donations by a Non-Resident Gujarati from Vadodara Kiran Patel, the University of South Florida (USF) has decided to team up with Indu Health Research Foundation (IHRF) to set up this tissue bank in Ahmedabad under its Centre for HIV-AIDS Research and Training (CHART) programme. The bank would be operational in six months, the promoters claimed.

Beata Herman of the USF has been camping here for the past three days, training microbiologists and technicians the nuances of procuring body components from donors and processing the same to remove histological markers so that the donated components are imbibed by patients with zero infection or rejection rate.

Explaining the operation, Herman said they would follow a stringent three-step procedure in procuring the tissue from the dead. "Consent of the dying person and also that of the next of the kin will be obtained and reconfirmed for donation. On the pathology front, it entails having the total the medical history of the patient. If at any stage the patient is found to carry infection, all the tissues will be discarded to ensure 100 per cent quality assurance", she said.

USF will provide specific technical help like the state-of-art equipment and training. The IHRF on its part will provide infrastructure; the foundation people are scouting the city for a site.

Outlining the potential category of beneficiaries IHRF chief Vijay Shah said they included patients with chronic back injuries (that has no prosthetic device replacement so far), trauma patients with multiple-bone injuries, third degree burns patients and even cancer patients who have suffered major loss of bone or skin.

About cost, Shah said the details were being worked out. Giving an instance nevertheless, he said that a donor bone graft could cost Rs 2000. "The same when taken from the other bones of the patient would also cost the same considering the surgery and the increase in the hospital stay", he reasoned.

News Source : The Times of India [India's best Newspaper]

 

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