Cuttack, Feb. 26: SCB Medical College and Hospital today became one of the few state government hospitals in the country to have an advanced stem cell bank with storage facility along with a full-fledged blood and marrow transplant unit.

Health and family welfare minister Damodar Rout inaugurated the facilities at the institute’s clinical haematology department.

At present, the transplantation unit will have two rooms with high-efficiency particulate absorption filter systems to provide sterile air. The provision for 20 beds will be made in subsequent phases.

The state government has decided to spend nearly Rs 25 crore to set up a dedicated building and procure other advanced equipment.

In the first phase, the existing unit will start with autologous transplantation in which stem cells will be collected from a patient and stored using the cryopreservation system. Later, high-dose chemotherapy will be administered to kill cancer cells followed by transfusion of the stored stem cells, which can be transplanted back in the patient after the treatment.

The hospital plans to start allogenic transplantation in the second phase, where the stem cells will be collected from a matched donor.

The cost of the two procedures outside the state is Rs 7 lakh to Rs 10 lakh and Rs 20 lakh to Rs 30 lakh, respectively. But at SCB, the treatment will cost around Rs 1-2 lakh and Rs 5-7 lakh, respectively.

“Many patients will benefit from the unit. We plan to conduct the first autologous transplant within a week, while the second phase allogenic transplant will be taken up in the next month,” said head of haematology department R.K. Jena.

More than 3,000 patients have been detected requiring BMT in the past four years.

“The SCB unit will be a big help for patients suffering from various forms of blood cancer,” said Pritinanda Das, a patient.

Das said patients from the state could opt for treatment at SCB at an affordable cost instead of moving to Delhi, Chandigarh or elsewhere.

Official sources equipment, including the machine required for collecting and storing stem cells for years together have been procured for Rs 5 crore. Moreover, stem cells of 500 persons can also be stored in the unit’s liquid nitrogen system.

Jena had undergone a three months training at the University of Minnesota, USA, while the first-batch four staff nurses and two laboratory technicians were trained at the Tata Medical Centre, Calcutta.