New Canadian Blood Bank will soon be ready for donations



(NC ) — Canada is making good on its promise to create a national public cord blood bank.

Starting this September, Canadian Blood Services will begin collecting donated cord blood from volunteering mothers at The Ottawa Hospital, with more hospitals to follow as the program evolves.

Provincial and territorial ministers of health, except Quebec, which operates its own blood supply and cord blood bank, earmarked $48 million to establish and operate a national, public cord blood bank. The goal of the bank is to collect 20,000 ethnically-diverse cord blood donations over eight years.

In order to build the bank, Canadian Blood Services has committed to raising $12.5 million in donations to help create two internationally-accredited manufacturing facilities in Ottawa and Edmonton and establish collection sites in Ottawa, Brampton (GTA), Edmonton and Vancouver.

“Canadian Blood Services is responding to an urgent health care need to meet the increasing demand for stems cells in Canada, a need that is growing at a staggering rate,” says Canadian Blood Services' CEO, Dr. Graham Sher. “The number of Canadians waiting for life-saving stem cell transplants has tripled over the past five years and continues to grow. As the population ages and medical therapies increasingly incorporate stem cell-based treatments, we expect demand to rise even higher.”

Stem cells found in the umbilical cord blood of newborn babies can save lives. Around the world, cord blood banks collect this life-saving blood to use in medical treatments for more than 50 diseases. But in Canada – where approximately 1,000 patients are waiting to find matching stem cell donors – there remains no national cord blood collection program.

Currently in Canada, the only G8 country without a national public cord blood bank, stem cells are extracted from adult bone marrow or peripheral blood donations, but the shortage of genetically-matched donors makes finding a match difficult and many patients never get the life-saving treatment they require. The ethnic mix of Canadian mothers and their babies provide a unique supply of stem cells that Canadians, and patients around the world, need.

“Cord blood provides options for minority patients whose genetic markers are less common and who have difficulty finding a matching adult donor,” says Dr. Donna Wall, director of the Manitoba Blood and Marrow Transplant program. “If we are able to add to the worldwide cord blood database, we will increase the chances of these patients in finding a match.”

Canadian Blood Services has posted more information about stem cell transplantation and the fundraising campaign at www.campaignforcanadians.ca and www.blood.ca/cordblood.

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