A two-year-old toddler, Zeenia suffering through Hemaphagocytic Lymphohistiocytosos (HLH) disease left her bone marrow lacking enough white blood cells and prone to infections was just cured of her ailment after undergoing a bone marrow transplant.
The patients father, Zia Ulla had tried multiple hospitals in major cities of Pakistan to no avail as the health professionals refused to treat Zeenia.
We did not want to risk Zeenias life and were looking for hospitals that had done such transplants in the past when a friend suggested Narayana Health City, Zia Ulla said.
Nontheless, the expected preference for a bone marrow donor is a sibling, Zeenias parents deemed her seven and a half month old son too young to be put through such an ordeal. However,upon reaching Narayana Health City hospital, they were reassured of the fact that it was safe for Ryan the younger brother to safely donate some of his bone marrow to his sister; thus making him the youngest donor in the country as of August 2016.
Since the donor was very young, we decided to extract the marrow in two phases separated by six weeks so that his health was in no way compromised. Then by using small marrow extraction needles and with the assistance of our able team of anesthetists and others, we successfully extracted enough marrow to help cure Zeenia, explained DR Sunil Bhatt, senior consultant and head of the Paediatric Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant unit at the Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre, Narayana Health City.
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