Morocco to have its 1st bone marrow transplant unit

Morocco will launch shortly its first bone marrow transplant unit to spare Moroccan patients costly travels abroad to undergo grafting operations.

The unit, 1st of its kind in the Maghreb, will be manned by specialized teams trained in France and the United States.

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 the following year.

The unit will help reduce by 50 to 60 % the surgery cost which ranges in France, for instance, between FF 300,000 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 bone marrow transplant is currently conducted 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.

Although BMTs now save thousands of lives each year, 70 percent of those needing a BMT requiring a donor are unable to undergo this surgery because a suitable bone marrow donor cannot be found.