Srinagar, Jun 23: Somewhere in Poland, an ordinary person made an extraordinary decision that gave a lease of life to a child in Kashmir.
Perhaps the donor took a day off work, travelled to a collection centre and donated stem cells.
Such acts are the true acts of selflessness, the person not knowing exactly whose life they might save.
In Kashmir, thousands of miles away, a three-year-old child was fighting for survival against a rare disorder.
His body's own immune system had turned into an enemy, pushing them towards death.
The two people, donor-recipient, never meet.
One is speaking Kashmiri, the other Polish, and they live on opposite sides of two continents.
Yet, that unknown donor became the difference between despair and hope for this Kashmiri family.
On Monday, a team of enthused doctors of Department of Hematology at SKIMS announced that they had successfully carried out J&K’s first Matched Unrelated Donor (MUD) Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation in a three-year-old child. The child suffered from HemophagocyticLymphohistiocytosis (HLH) which is a rare and potentially fatal disease.
In these patients, the immune system becomes dangerously overactive, attacking the body's own organs and tissues.
For any patient, including this child, it meant death sentence.
While a stem cell transplant offers a cure, the chances of finding a compatible donor are as rare as the disease.
Family members are tested first, but most children never find a suitable match.
In this child too, this window closed even before it could open. The hunt widened beyond Kashmir, beyond India and eventually crossed the borders.
It ended in Poland, where an anonymous volunteer registered with DKMS. DKMS is one of the world's largest stem cell donor registries. The donor turned out to be a perfect match.
In medical terms, it is called ‘matched unrelated donor transplant’. The family calls it a ‘miracle’.
The donor's stem cells were collected and transported through a network no less wired than a maze, ultimately reaching Srinagar. At SKIMS, doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists and support staff prepared for a procedure considered one of the most demanding in medical sciences.
Every step carries a risk, and demands precision.
After the transplant, the real test awaited: Would the new stem cells take hold? Would the stem cells be accepted by child’s body? Would the transplant succeed?
It did. The child made it.
Today SKIMS Soura held a press conference to announce the success of one of the rarest procedures carried out in this part of the World. Apart from being a medical success story it stood out as a profoundly human one.
The kindness of a stranger miles away, gives lease of life to a child who may never know who and what saved him.
Director SKIMS Soura announced the feat to media today while lauding that SKIMS Soura has joined the prestigious institutes in country to carry out this procedure.
“The child received the treatment almost free, except the expenditure on drugs. Outside it costs around Rs 40 lakh,” he said. He urged people of Kashmir to register for stem cell donation and help saving lives, the same way the Polish citizen had done.