City docs give a new lease of life to Pak, Afghan children

There couldn’t have been a better gift for one-year-old Mohammed Hamdaan, a Pakistani child, than gifting him a healthy life.

Doctors at the Jayedeva Institute of Cardio Vascular Sciences and Research in the City did the same to the toddler from Karachi.

Mohammed Hamdaan was operated upon at the hospital recently to correct his Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD), a congenital heart defect. The boy also celebrated his first birthday at the hospital recently.

When Hamdaan didn’t gain weight many months after the birth and was repeatedly affected by cold, cough, fever and other problems, his parents decided to seek medical help. It was then that the child was diagnosed with the VSD.
The doctors in Pakistan told the child’s parents that operating on such a young child involved a lot of risk and also needed expertise.

Hamdaan’s parents then sent the medical records to Dr C N Manjunath, Director of the Jayedeva Institute of Cardio Vascular Sciences and Research, through email. Following which the child’s condition was assessed and later operated upon.

A team headed by Professor P S Seetharama Bhat, Dr Girish Gowda, Dr Parimala Prasanna Simha and Dr Jayaranganath operated on the child a week ago. The child has now recovered fully, the doctors said.

Afghan boy
With huge cost involved in treating his ailment, Kulraj, 4, a Sikh refugee from Afghanistan, faced a bleak future.

However, Kulraj received a new lease of life, following haplo identical stem cell transplant using TCR Alpha/Beta depletion to treat his condition. 

The transplant, was possible, thanks to team of doctors at Narayana Health City, lead by Pediatric hematology, Oncology & Bone Marrow Transplant Unit Senior Consultant & Head Dr Sunil Bhat.

Kulraj was afflicted with Amegakaryocytic Thrombocytopenia evolving into Aplastic Anaemia — a disease, in which the bone marrow is unable to generate mature blood cells.

The child’s surgery was possible in India after the boy’s father Sajan Singh, filed a Public Interest Litigation in Delhi High Court, seeking free treatment at All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

Though the court directed the hospital to treat the boy free of cost, a suitable donor could not be found, nor boy’s brother and father, who underwent human leukocyte antigen tissue matching test, matched the surgery’s requirement.

It was then haplo-identical stem cell transplant was explored to treat the condition, with Narayana Health Chairman Dr Devi Shetty, taking up the case at Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre, Narayana Health City, Bangalore. 

Dr Sunil Bhat said “we decided to perform India’s first haplo-identical transplant using TCR Alpha/ Beta depletion. This is an advanced BMT technique for haplo transplants known for potentially better treatment outcomes and has been mostly used to treat certain types of cancer.”