Brampton Civic Hospital is celebrating five years as one of just four collection sites across Canada for our public Cord Blood Bank in Ottawa. And it’s making a pretty significant contribution.
The hospital, part of the William Osler Health System, has the highest percentage of new moms consenting to donate umbilical cord blood from their newborns – 65 per cent, compared to the national average of 55 per cent.
And it has the highest percentage of non-Caucasian participation.
“Osler serves a population of 1.3 million in one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the country,” Patricia
Geerlinks, Clinical Director of Women’s, Children’s and Seniors’ at the William Osler Health System, said.
And that means its cord blood units have a greater chance of being a match to a patient in need of stem cells, in Canada or abroad.
Private cord blood banks have been around in Canada for more than two decades.
Families must pay initial processing fees and annual storage fees. The stem cells from their child’s umbilical cord is only available for them to use, if they should have a medical need in the future.
With the public cord blood bank, which opened in Ottawa in October 2013, there is no fee and anyone who could benefit from those stem cells, anywhere in the world, may access them.
“Those stem cells can be used to treat over 80 different diseases and it's a fantastic way that you might have the opportunity to save someone's life,” Eileen Quinlan, Collection Supervisor for the Cord Blood program at Canadian Blood Services, said.
Some of the illnesses treated with stem cells from umbilical cords are leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia, sickle cell disease and metabolic disorders.
Since it opened, Canada’s public cord blood bank has sent out 22 units, to help save lives around the world.
Doctor Melanie Hall is a family physician at Brampton Civic. She talks to all her maternity patients about donating to the cord blood bank when they get to about eight months in their pregnancy.
She reminds expectant moms that there is no cost at all involved.
“Absolutely no cost to use, no harm to ourselves and to the baby. And it's something that would otherwise have been just discarded” she says, referring to the umbilical cord itself.
Michelle Carvalheiro, who is currently expecting her fourth child, says her oldest was born before Canada had a public cord blood bank.
But her two daughters, born since then, have both contributed their cord blood and she plans to donate again when her fourth child is born. She says staff answered all her questions ahead of time.
“And then when you deliver, they take the cord and that’s it,” she says. “And you’re able to help others with it.”
She says the significance of being able to offer stem cell treatments to others hit home with her because she has a relative who suffers from a type of leukemia.
“I couldn’t do anything to help her because she’s all the way in Portugal. And they don’t have this kind of (cord blood program) over there.”
Anyone interested in contributing to the public cord blood program can find information through Canadian Blood Services.
