Morocco to have its 1st bone marrow transplant unit
Morocco, Health, 6/25/1998

Morocco will launch next October its first bone marrow transplant unit to spare the Moroccan patients the sufferings of travelling abroad to undergo grafting operations.

The unit, 1st of its kind in the Maghreb, will be manned by specialized surgeon teams from Morocco and France.

The unit, comprising a high-tech lab and a modern blood transfusion center, will conduct 10 operations in its first year before doubling this capacity in the following year, Map reported.

The unit will help reduce by 50 and 60 percent the surgery cost which ranges in France, for instance, between 300,000 fr.f and one million Francs depending on the kind of grafting.

Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is a relatively new medical procedure used to treat diseases once thought incurable. The transplant is currently used in South Africa and some Arab countries such as Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

Since it was first successfully conducted in 1968, BMT is used to treat patients diagnosed with leukemia, aplastic anemia, lymphomas such as Hodgkin's disease, multiple myeloma, immune deficiency disorders and some solid tumors such as breast and ovarian cancers.

In 1991, more than 7,500 people underwent BMTs nationwide. Although BMTs now save thousands of lives each year, 70 percent of those needing a BMT using donor marrow are unable to undergo this surgery because a suitable bone marrow donor cannot be found

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