An overview of umbilical cord blood donation

Sometimes, parents might have to make some really important and wise decisions of their lives. These might be which Paediatrician to consult and many other such dilemmas. Nowadays, the most important issue is whether to donate your baby’s umbilical cord blood or not.

You might have seen different advertisements which appear in the parenting magazines, direct mailings and many other sources in which the parents are made aware of the benefits of saving their baby’s umbilical cord blood for the future. It is not at all painful and the blood won’t be thrown away as a medical waste.

The reason why the umbilical cord blood is important lies in the basic fact that the umbilical cord blood cells can help in the treatment of a number of diseases like leukaemia, sickle cell disease as well as metabolic disorders.

Thus the umbilical cord blood can be stored and kept in a private or public umbilical cord blood bank. This is a proper means of insurance of the blood as well. It might be beneficial in those cases when a family member is suffering from a problem and with the support of a bone marrow transplant, the problem can definitely be solved.

Also, there are further problems which can be attributed to umbilical cord blood donation. One of the biggest problems concerning the people is a handsome amount of money is charged in donating the umbilical cord blood to the private cord blood bank.

The initial processing fee, banking fee and the annual storage fee is also quite large. Apart from this, there is no such evidence that the children would need their own cord blood. In fact there are also questions on the safety issues as well as whether the autologous cord blood transplantation is effective for the treatment of malignant neoplasm.

Besides, in case your child suffers from a problem that can be treated by cord blood transplantation then even if you do not get the umbilical cord blood stored at the cord blood bank, you still have a number of options available for him. There are some traditional treatments, bone marrow transplants or you can even search for a cord blood match in a public cord blood bank.

Apart from private cord blood banks as well as public cord blood banks there are other options for the donation of umbilical cord blood. As per the Cord Blood Stem Cell Act of 2005, a ‘National Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank Network’ would be created for the purpose of preparation, storage as well as distribution of human umbilical cord blood stem cells for the treatment of the patients as well as to support peer-viewed research using these cells.

There are also free cord blood banks which are a part of the National Marrow Donor Program Network and available in 12 major cities. Thus it quite easy to donate your child’s umbilical cord blood and people are strongly encouraged to donate the umbilical cord blood of the baby to the public cord blood bank.

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