JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: I would like to congratulate the National Institute of Blood Diseases, Karachi on having found a treatment for thalassaemia, which can enable 80 per cent of patients to either not need blood transfusions or reduce the need by half of the earlier transfusion frequency. Thalassaemia is a hereditary disorder that affects a person’s ability to produce haemoglobin (red blood cells), implying that patients suffering from this disorder require lifelong extensive and very expensive treatment, including regular blood transfusions.
In Pakistan alone, 5,000 to 8,000 patients are born every year with this blood disorder, while around 10 million people are carriers, who can pass the disease on to others. It took 10 years of research to identify an already available medicine for the treatment of thalassaemia patients. These research details were recently published in a US medical journal, The Journal of Pediatric Hematology and in the British journal Lancet.
Though this research is yet to be recognised by international medical institutes — which means that till that time, this medication can only be used for further research under the supervision of doctors specialising in treating blood disorders — this is still great news for millions of child patients and their parents all across the world as it gives the hope that we are not far away from finding an effective treatment for this complicated blood disease.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2012.
