Journalism of Courage
Cell Source founder Firdosh Roowalla talks about his vision of developing a database of bone marrow donors in the city
Contrary to popular belief that a persons bone marrow can be used to help only his own blood relatives,a persons bone marrow,if of the right type,can be used to help out a donor who is in dire need, says Firdosh Roowalla,who is the founder member of city-based Cell Source. Roowallas company helps harvest and create a database of donors. The information can then be accessed by drug manufacturing companies,or doctors for patients who are in dire need of a bone marrow transplant.
Every test costs R14,000 per person,an amount Roowalla pays for himself. The roadblock in the way of a business model here is that the data is highly sensitive and is not available readily on the Internet. In fact,I give out the data to the doctors who require a certain bone marrow type and then the doctor contacts the recipient and we contact the donor. All the medical expenses of the donor and his stay at the hospital are borne by the recipient. At the end,the profit margin is somewhere between R 30,000-40,000. A normal recipient may have to shell out anywhere in between R 2.5-5 lakhs,depending upon the case.
Roowalla,however,admits that getting the infrastructure in place is difficult and that investors are few. Around 30 per cent of the transplants are sought by relatives of the donors,but around 70 per cent are done through external donors. As of now,I have only 11 donors registered on my database. I am hopeful that through bone marrow collection drives,the number will increase, he says.
