Day-Care Centre For Treatment Of Blood Disorders To Come Up Soon
Updated: Apr 7, 2018, 12.00 AM IST
Facility expected to take pressure off Sassoon.
In a piece of unexpected good news for thousands of people suffering from blood disorders the state health department will start a free day-care centre at the Aundh district hospital for patients suffering from diseases like haemophilia, sickle cell anaemia and thalassemia. The proposal regarding this initiative has been sent to the director of health services and the unit is expected to start in a couple of months. Currently there is only one centre in Pune, at the Sassoon General Hospital, that deals with a huge number of patients suffering from these disorders.
The day-care centre will be started under the National Health Mission (NHM) programme. The centre will have facilities like diagnosis, medicines, physiotherapy and psychosocial and psychiatric counselling under one roof. The centre will have medicines and blood factors for the patients. The number of haemophilia patients is huge in comparison to the patients suffering from other blood disorders. All the three blood disorders are genetic in nature.
Haemophilia is a rare genetic disorder that prevents clotting leading to excessive blood loss while in thalassemia patients are not able to make produce enough haemoglobin, which causes severe anaemia. In sickle cell disease, red blood cells contort into the shape of a sickle. The cells die early leaving a shortage of healthy red blood cells (sickle cell anaemia) and can block blood flow causing pain (sickle cell crisis).
Dr R K Shelke, civil surgeon, Aundh district hospital, said, “Currently the burden of all the patients is on Sassoon General Hospital and now it has become the need of hour to start another centre. The list of the factors and medicines required to treat this patient has been submitted to the director of health services office and the soon we will receive the medicines. The staff for the centre will be procured on contract basis and will be given additional training. The centre is expected to start within a couple of months.”
Dr Vijay Ramanan, founding director, bone marrow transplant, Ruby Hall Clinic, Pune, said, “There are 13 factors in the blood and of these two — VIII and IX — are the factors that cause haemophilia. The mother is the carrier of the disease and the male child is the sufferer due to having only one X factor in blood, as female has XX factors. In a country like India the treatment is given on demand. The factors are given according to the weight of the patient.”
Dr Ramanan, added, “Giving factors is not the only solution to the problem and the patients have to do regular exercise to control the disease. If the muscles are good only then will the bleeding stop. If there is no muscle development it is of no use.”
Source : Pune Mirror
