The Hindu : New Delhi News : One-stop thalassemia screening facility

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 27, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

One-stop thalassemia screening facility

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI: Three government hospitals in the Capital have taken steps to provide a one-stop thalassemia screening facility for expectant women.

Much like the rest of the country, thalassemia is listed as the most common inherited blood disorder in the city with hospitals reporting increased registration of children each year. And while education and cautioning "carrier" parents about the ailment have not helped in bringing down the numbers, the State Health Department is now offering free facility to screen pregnant women.

The Health Department has installed three variant high-end HPLC thalassemia screening machines at LNJP, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Guru Tegh Bahadur hospitals. Beginning full-fledged operations after having diverted and trained doctors for testing and using the machine, the machine offers a chance to parents to check their own carrier status and also know about the status of their yet-to-be-born child.

"Survival of thalassemia patients depends on repeated blood transfusion and costly medicines throughout life, while the cost of therapy ranges from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 2 lakhs per year. Those children who are not diagnosed or don't get life long treatment often never survive more than five years. Abroad, while there are programmes that enable thalassemics to lead a full life, India continues to lag behind with many new born children being constantly added to the list of thalassemic group,'' said the Head of the Paediatrics Department at LNJP Hospital, A.P. Dubey.

"The new machine will give in-house capacity for confirmatory diagnosis. This would help us in reducing the `lost' cases due to the highly expensive tests involved at private labs and also create a first hand database of the patients, besides giving them counselling will also help us chalk out an immediate treatment plan,'' said Dr. Dubey.

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