Heated debates among Chinese experts about setting up umbilical
cord blood banks have prompted a statement by the Ministry of
Health to regulate and standardize blood banks in China.
The statement prohibits enterprises and individuals from setting up
such banks for profit. The ministry has given authorization to only
seven provincial-level health departments in the country.
It
has been reported that saving cord blood is a form of life
insurance, as cord blood has abundant stem cells which can produce
red and white cells as well as blood platelets. The latter are
invaluable for the treatment of some leukemias and cancer.
Experts estimated four out of 100,000 people develop a blood
disease in their lifetime. A patient is less likely to suffer from
rejection during a blood transfusion if his own cord blood is used.
An
enterprise in Tianjin, a neighboring city of Beijing, aims to have
500,000 samples in its blood bank.
Several academicians with the Chinese Academy of Sciences have
raised doubts about the so-called "life banks" because of the
feasibility and cost.
Tang Peixuan, Vice Director of China Experimental Blood Society,
says, "Babies with congenital diseases are likely to have latent
morbid cells in their cord blood, which will cause diseases after
being implanted into a patient's body."
Li
Guishan, an expert with a blood research center affiliated to China
Medical Academy, says, "The amount of a baby's cord blood varies
from 60 to 100 milliliters. This small quantity is enough for a
child weighing 20 to 40 kg, but an adult would need twice that
amount. And we haven't been able to increase cord blood amount with
our present technology."
Experts also say costs for keeping blood samples are too expensive
for an ordinary family to bear, when an annual maintenance fee of
over 500 yuan (US$ 60.6)is necessary as well as an initial payment
of 5,000 yuan (US$ 606).
Han Zhongchao, one of the Tianjin cord blood bank initiators, said
that only healthy stem cells will be accepted and cells with
deficiencies could be modified with the development of genetic
technology.
It
is estimated that China has over 10,000 cord blood samples,
representing one seventh of those in the world. Possessing close to
6,000 samples of cord blood, a center in east China's Shandong
province, is the largest of its kind.
The Shandong cord blood bank has attracted many customers from
Shandong and outside areas since last December. A father from
Henan, a province close to Shandong, has delivered his baby's cord
blood to the blood bank immediately after the infant's birth.
Sources from the Shandong bank say only 35 blood samples have been
used in blood disease treatment, worldwide the figure is 1,200.
(Xinhua News
Agency December 5, 2001)