Regional
Establishment of a Stem Cell Donor Registry in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is an island nation with a population of approximately 22 million. It has a hybrid healthcare system, consisting of both state and private healthcare institutions with the state sector providing treatment free of charge.
National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) of Sri Lanka was established in late 1950s as a special campaign coming under the Ministry of Health. Started initially as a single blood bank and it later expanded as a centrally coordinated system covering the entire island.
Felicitation of the first volunteer for SLSCDR
NBTS Sri Lanka won the inaugural award for the transfusion services in developing countries from ISBT in 2012 and abolished replacement blood donations by 2014. Two major contributors to these achievements are the commitment of the Government of Sri Lanka and the academic development in the field of transfusion medicine in the country. College of Transfusion Physicians of Sri Lanka, consisting of professionals in the field of transfusion medicine, plays a pivotal role in these developments.
Although Sri Lanka has made significant progress in the healthcare delivery including solid organ transplantation, we have been lagging when it comes to establishment of bone marrow transplantation (BMT). The first successful autologous bone marrow transplantation in state sector hospitals in Sri Lanka was carried-out in 2015 at the National Cancer Institute, Maharagama. Prof. David Ma, Dr. John Moore and the staff of Kinghorn Cancer Centre, Sydney, Australia trained and guided the team from Sri Lanka during this process. Since then, it has progressed with the establishment of BMT units in a number of both state and private sector hospitals.
Launching of the SLSCDR website
Although the BMT program in Sri Lanka has progressed smoothly since inception, a major stumbling block for the progress of allogenic transplants has been the difficulty in finding matched donors. For all the allogenic transplants carried out so far, donors have been either close family members of those identified and collected through overseas bone marrow registries at a considerable cost. In addition to this there were instances where search for matched donors for expatriate Sri Lankans ended up in failure.
To overcome this, the NBTS Sri Lanka, with enthusiastic support from all the relevant specialties, including Transfusion Medicine, Haematology and Haemato-oncology, launched a program to establish the Sri Lanka Stem Cell Donor Registry (SLSCDR). It is envisaged that this will help Sri Lankans – both local and expatriate – as well as those in regional countries.
Initial approvals were obtained from the Ministry of Health, the team-initiated discussions with accredited overseas laboratories for histocompatibility testing. Offers were evaluated and a laboratory was selected for the testing of initial samples. Promotional material, such as banners to be displayed at blood banks and mobile blood collection venues and handouts, were developed by the NBTS team. In addition, a “pledge form” to collect contact and other relevant details of those who are willing to join the registry and other relevant documents were also developed. A “home grown” software solution was developed by a local developer in consultation with the transplant teams and other relevant parties.
Flyer for donor recruitment
Once everything was in place, in consultation with Ministry of Health, we selected the World Blood Donor Day (WBDD) 2024 as the day to launch the recruitment process. This is due to a number of reasons. Usually, the WBDD is celebrated in a grand scale in Sri Lanka with a national event in the capital city - Colombo. A selection of blood donors, representing all the districts and all the ethnics groups are felicitated at this event. In addition, being a national event there is a considerable coverage in both print and electronic media. As regular blood donors are our main focus in the recruitment drive, the team decided that this is the ideal opportunity.
