Founder Seun Adebiyi and University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital students snap a picture following the event. LIANA SCHAPIRO
Bone marrow transplants, or hematopoietic stem cell transplantations (HSCT), treat more than 70 different diseases, including some types of leukemia, lymphoma, and sickle cell anaemia. But such treatment often requires the matching of strangers for their human leukocyte antigen (HLA) tissue type. And while 70 percent of Caucasian patients are successfully matched, only 17 percent of black people in the United States are as lucky, according to The New York Stem Cell Foundation, likely because only 8 percent of donors in US registries are black.
The Bone Marrow Registry of Nigeria (BMRN), the country’s first ever bone marrow registry and the continent’s second (South Africa having the only other accredited registry), aims to change all that. The registry follows the excitement surrounding Nigeria’s first bone marrow transplant last October, in which...
Adebiyi also plans to establish another Nigerian source for stem cell transplants—an umbilical cord blood bank. “With as little as $75,000, we could build [a cord blood bank] in Nigeria by the end of this year instead of discarding this valuable source of stem cells,” he said in a Lancet press release. “There are almost 400 distinct ethnic groups and over 154 million people in Nigeria alone, and there is a huge population of umbilical stem cells just waiting to be banked in the maternity wards of hospitals around the country.”
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