Evercare Hospital Dhaka becomes first in Bangladesh to offer all types of Bone Marrow Transplant service
Stuff correspondent:
Evercare Hospital has become the first center in Bangladesh to perform all kinds of Bone Marrow Transplants (BMT), using cutting-edge facilities and expert medical staff to provide BMT to patients at an affordable cost.
Bone Marrow Transplants consist of 2 types – autologous and allogeneic. High doses of chemotherapy or radiotherapy or combined radio-chemotherapy are used to eradicate the residual malignancy and to create a space in the bone marrow for the donor stem cells to settle. These donor cells grow into the patient’s body and give them a new life. Generally myeloid cancers need only chemotherapy while lymphoid cancers need radio-chemotherapy.
In 2015, Dr. Abu Jafar Mohammed Saleh joined Evercare Hospital Dhaka (formerly Apollo Hospitals Dhaka); he previously worked at the world-famous King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for 10 years, and has a massive amount of experience with all types of BMT.
In 2016, with limited resources, Dr. Saleh created a medium-sized Hematology unit focusing on the autologous type of BMT. After recruiting and training doctors, nurses and pharmacists, a complete fully-equipped BMT unit with modern facilities was established in 2018. Allogeneic BMT was started from August 2019 for AML only.
Recently, new cutting-edge facilities for Total Body Irradiation (TBI) were added to help with BMT for ALL, lymphoma and other types of cancers. For the first time in Bangladesh, this technology was used on 1st September 2020 for a lymphoma patient. The hospital is conducting allogeneic BMT for Leukemia, Lymphoma and Aplastic anemia and offering scope for Thalassemia and other diseases; while work on autologous BMT continues with 18 successful cases already performed on both local and foreign patients.
The hospital also offers high quality Flowcytometry, Immunohistochemistry, PET scan, Plasma exchange and modern blood bank services.
These treatments are at a competitive cost with other hospitals in Bangladesh and at much more affordable rates than neighboring countries. All BMT and leukemia services remain open during this Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr. Saleh says, ‘Any patient suffering from Hematological cancers can get this modern treatment facility without going abroad.’
Evercare Hospital Dhaka is the only JCI accredited Hospital in Bangladesh with international-standard healthcare. It is a part of Evercare Group, present in over 25 cities, with 30+ hospitals, 15 clinics and 50+ diagnostic centers across 2 continents, in their mission to provide quality healthcare in emerging markets.
