Iraqi thalessemic siblings get relief in Pune

Safa Hussein Muayad (13) from Iraq was merely six months old when her mother noticed that she looked pale, weak and didn’t take feeds well besides falling prey to recurrent infections. Suspecting something amiss, her mother, Batool Mashkoor, consulted doctors and a simple blood test confirmed their worst fears — the baby was suffering from thalassemia major.

Thalassemia major is a serious genetic blood disorder characterised by defective production of haemoglobin. Affected patients require lifelong blood transfusions and after the diagnosis, began a monthly cycle of painful blood transfusions for Safa.

As if seeing one child suffer the pain wasn’t enough, Batool learnt that she was pregnant again and her yet-to-be born child was also a thalassemia major. Though doctors advised abortion, Batool refused owing to her religious beliefs and her son Ali was also born with the disorder six years ago.

For several years, the Baghdad resident whose husband serves in the Iraqi army, saw her children suffer until one day an acquaintance recommended a doctor at Pune’s Ruby Hall Clinic. Haematologist Dr Vijay Ramanan said bone marrow transplant was a good option in such cases.

“Bone marrow transplant is a good option for such patients. The couple has three children and the eldest son has no trace of the disorder. Luckily, human leukocyte antigen (HLA) of the eldest son, Muamood, was a perfect match for his sister Safa. However, it didn’t match Ali. Instead, mother Batool was a 50% match for the youngest son and hence, we used a relatively new technique called haplo identical bone marrow transplant that is used in half-matched cases,” said Dr Ramanan,who runs the bone marrow transplant unit at Ruby Hall Clinic. The transplant was conducted on both the siblings in last week of September and after a recovery period of 21 days, the family was discharged from hospital.

“Before surgery, we had to give injections to the donor to prepare them and in case of recipients, we had to give them chemotherapy to eliminate existing bone marrow cells,” recalled Dr Ramanan.

Nearly three months have passed after the surgery, the longest period that the siblings have gone without blood transfusions. “Before surgery, we ensured they had zero bone marrow cells. After surgery, the biggest indicator of success was that healthy bone marrow started forming on its own. We can say this was a successful bone marrow transplant,” said the doctor.