Cuttack, Sept. 3: Doctors at SCB Medical College and Hospital today successfully conducted their fiftieth bone marrow transplant on a 40-year-old woman from Rourkela.

A doctor here claimed that the hospital also achieved the rare feat of being the only government-run health care facility in the country to have conducted 50 bone marrow transplants free of costs.

Bishnu Priya Nayak, 40, has been undergoing treatment for some months for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, at SCB's clinical haematology department. Doctors at the department had decided to go for bone marrow transplantation on her about a month ago. 'The successful completion of the surgery is a new milestone for the country and the state,' said Rabindra Kumar Jena, head of clinical haematology at SCB.

According to haematologists, the transplant is performed when a person's marrow is not healthy enough to function properly because of chronic infections, disease or cancer. This procedure involves transplanting blood stem cells, which travel to the bone marrow where they produce new blood cells and promote growth of new marrow. 'A bone marrow transplant replaces your damaged stem cells with the healthy ones. This helps your body make enough white blood cells, platelets or red blood cells to avoid infections, bleeding disorders or anaemia,' said haematologist Sudha Sethy.

'The patient is under observation, as the post-operative period is generally critical. She needs to be kept in a sanitised isolation room to avoid infection,' said Dr Jena.

He said the SCB was the only government hospital in the country to provide state-of-the-art facilities for bone marrow transplant surgery free of cost.

The whole transplant process costs about Rs 2 lakh at a government hospital and more than Rs 10 lakh at private hospitals.

The bone marrow transplant team at the SCB consisted of haematologists R.K. Jena, Sudha Sethy, Rajeeb Nayak, Manmohan Biswal, S.B. Rout and C.R. Kar.

The bone marrow transplant unit at the hospital's clinical haematology department was inaugurated on February 26, 2014. During the inauguration of the unit, the only of its kind in the state, the government had announced to bear the full cost of bone marrow transplant surgery. The Odisha State Treatment Fund bears the expenditure for Nayak's treatment.

The first transplant at the unit was conducted nearly two months later on 54-year-old Sankutala Sahoo from Kendrapara on April 23, 2014.

'Of all the few 50 patients, who have undergone transplants here, 46 people are living a healthy and normal life. There had been three deaths - two due to infection after the transplant and another after 178 days of the transplant due to brain stroke, which was not in anyway related to the disease,' said Jena.

Another haematologist at the department said: 'The eldest person to have undergone a bone marrow transplant from the entire continents of Asia and Europe is Zabar Kahan, 74, who was a patient here. We have also conducted the transplant on five patients at age of above 65 years, which is the first of its kind in entire India, Asia and Europe.'

He said: 'We are all set to take more complicated cancer patients for bone marrow transplants. Besides, we are also expanding the unit to accommodate more patients suffering from thalassemia, sickle cell disease and cancer.'

According to the SCB, there are at least 3,000 patients in the state who need bone marrow transplantation.