Physicians at Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital (NRS), located in the Indian city of Kolkata, have performed a bone marrow transplant on a 37-year-old multiple myeloma patient. This procedure marks the first time that a public hospital in the region has performed such a transplant.

Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located in eastern India on the east bank of the River Hooghly, the city is home to over 15 million people, making it India's third-largest city and the 14th largest metropolitan area in the world. Though once the center of Indian government and culture, Kolkata has endured economic instability and political violence in recent decades.

Bela Samanta, the transplant recipient, had been treated for multiple myeloma at NRS for the past year. After she achieved complete remission in September, NRS organized a five-physician panel to coordinate an autologous stem cell tranpslant. These transplants, in which doctors harvest a patient's own bone marrow stem cells and then re-infuse them after bone marrow-destroying, high-dose chemotherapy, often provide the best long term survival rates for young myeloma patients. The NRS team, because their hospital had never performed a stem cell transplant, consulted directly with Dr. Kanjakash Ghosh, director of the National Institute of Immunohaematology in Mumbai.

Physicians performed the transplant in late January, and the hospital constructed an entirely new isolation room and provided dedicated nursing care for Samanta's recovery. The post-transplant period is often the most dangerous, because until patients' bone marrow replenishes, they remain at high risk of infection.

As a public hospital, NRS covered most of the 2,000,000 rupee transplant and recovery costs (~40,350 US dollars). By contrast, a private Indian hospital charges a minimum of 5,000,000 rupees for transplant, excluding physicians' fees and isolation ward expenses.

Dr. Kanjakash Ghosh emphasizes, "This [bone marrow transplant] will change the popular perception that government hospitals are not efficient in dealing with serious diseases," and "the whole team did a tremendous job in making this a success."

NRS plans to perform bone marrow transplants on three additional patients in the coming months.

For more information, please see the full February 19 article in The Times of India.