To aid the merger between these two hospitals, A K Khan Healthcare Trust has been at the forefront with its dedicated staff and its philanthropic eye for cancer patients in Bangladesh.
understaffed and we cease this opportunity to praise them for the work they do.A Chat with the faculty & staff of Bone Marrow Transplant Unit of DMCH
A historical landmark was achieved in 2014 with the first-ever bone-marrow transplantation in the country by Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). It certainly raised the hopes of the multitude suffering from different types of blood cancers like leukaemia and certain genetic blood and immune disorders like thalassemia, cancer of the lymphatic system and aplastic anaemia.
At present there are currently more than 12,00,000 cancer patients in Bangladesh. About 200,000 new cancer cases are added each year and 150,000 die from the disease annually.
Cancers are still considered around the world to be beyond any cure. However, prolonging life, reducing symptoms and complete remission is often a possibility if the tumor is detected at its early stage.
Peoples ignorance about the various aspects of cancer i.e causes, symptoms and its prevention, control and treatment is primarily responsible to turn it into an epidemic form. Spearheaded by the leadership of Professor Dr. M A Khan and Dr Bimalanhshu Dey the BMT team of DMCH has grown from strength to strength.
People can receive bone marrow transplants at a cost of Tk 5 lakh from DMCH while it usually takes Tk 90 lakh abroad, especially in South Asian countries, as per reports carried in different news papers. But DMCH has not been alone in its endeavors to create this state of the art bone marrow transplant unit. In fact DMCH has been working under the close supervision of some of the best medical and nursing staff of Massachusetts General Hospital.
To aid the merger between these two hospitals, A K Khan Healthcare Trust has been at the forefront with its dedicated staff and its philanthropic eye for cancer patients in Bangladesh.
These selfless souls fly in from America every few months to treat cancer patients and teach our medical staff in DMCH.
The Stethoscope team recently spoke to Shabnam Sultana of A. K. Khan Healthcare Trust, Anne-Marie Barron and Christine Shaughnessy of Massachusetts who are working in close collaboration with the DMCH bone marrow transplant unit. A short profile of Anne Marie Barron and Christine Shaughnessy is given below.
Anne-Marie Barron PhD, RN, PMHCNS-BC, FNAP is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Students and Curriculum in the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Simmons College. Dr. Barron received her B.S. in nursing from Boston College, her M.S. in Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her PhD from Boston College.
Dr. Barron has taught across the undergraduate curriculum in a number of courses: Psychiatric Nursing; Leadership and Management; Nursing Research, and Caring at the End of Life.
Christine Shaughnessy has been an oncology nurse on the Bone Marrow Transplant and Hematology-Oncology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital for seven years. She has recently graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a Masters of Science in Nursing. She is responsible for teaching our nurses about oncology related patient care
Shabnam Sultana is the Project Manager of AKKHT and is one the chief coordinators and teachers of the BMT Nurses Training Program.
Please tell our readers about whats happening in the BMT centre of DMCH and your roles:
A bone marrow transplant has five stages physical examination to assess general health level, harvesting process of obtaining the stem cells to be used in the transplant, conditioning preparing the affected body for the transplant, transplanting the stem cells and recovery period monitoring for adverse effects.
Bone-marrow transplant requires a close genetic match between donor and recipient. To mitigate the donor crisis DMCH has already started a bone marrow registry, an undeniably wise initiative.
Our roles are mostly to provide training to nurses in DMCH on various aspects of Bone Marrow Transplant. However when we started our work it became clear that the language barrier will be an impediment to our progress. So our American team, with several volunteers from AKKHT provides English language classes as well.
Anne-Marie: My lifes work has also been about teaching nurses about the organizational aspects of nursing and palliation which I believe to be a vital aspect in cancer care. I also teach about the psychological aspects of cancer care with my students in DMCH.
Christine: Teaching about Bone Marrow Transplant and helping the medical team during the actual therapeutic process is my primary duty.
Tell us about your experience of working in DMCH:
DMCH is by far the busiest hospital we have ever worked in. The nurses in DMCH work under the most strenuous conditions and the number of patients is overwhelming. DMCH is almost comically understaffed and we cease this opportunity to praise them for the work they do.
But the national nursing curriculum and the overall training facilities should be updated and we also believe more nurses and staff should be recruited for busy hospitals like DMCH. As far as our BMT team is concerned we have performed till date 22 bone marrow transplants successfully. There are two subclasses of bone marrow transplants.
Autologous Bone Marrow Transplant
In autologous transplants, the transplanted stem cells come from the body of the patient having the transplant.
The doctors remove the stem cells from the child, store them, and then put these cells back after destroying the cancer or diseased cells with conditioning. Till date, only autologous bone marrow transplants are being performed in DMCH.
Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplant
For some diseases, the transplanted stem cells come from another person, called a donor. Donor transplants are called allogeneic transplants. Why use another persons stem cells? Often the patients own blood cells are simply too diseased to be given back to them.
In other cases, the donated stem cells are far more aggressive in killing the patients diseased cells. We aim to start allogenic transplants but the logistics, training and experience required for allogenic grafts is something which will need more time. However if everything goes right we will do our first allogenic transplant this December.
Our last question is for Shabnam Sultana of A K Khan Healthcare Trust; Please tell us about the involvement of AK Khan Trust in everything thats going on.
The Nursing Training Program has been the highlight of AK Khan Healthcare Trusts operations. With huge contributions from Bostons Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) specially Dr. Bimalangshu Dey and Ministry of Health Family Welfare (MHFW) at last we started the Nurse Training Program (NTP) on February 2013 and successfully completed our program along with 20 BMT expert Nurses on January 2014.
After completing all the formalities, an agreement between the following organizations was reached namely; Ministry of Health Family Welfare, A K Khan Healthcare Trust and Massachusetts General Hospital. Experts from MGH and AKKHT trained the Nurses.
The nurses were certified as BMT specialized by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Directorate of Nursing Service (DNS) of Bangladesh and A K Khan Healthcare Trust (AKKHT). The Nurse Training Program (NTP) of A K Khan Healthcare Trust focus on improving clinical knowledge, exposure to latest innovation; it gives basic knowledge on computer, helps to acquire critical thinking ability and last but not the least aims to provide better skills in English.
We wish our team of DMCH Bone Morrow Transplant Unit and A K Khan Healthcare Trust all the best and hope and pray that their good work is not marred by the cancer of corruption or bureaucratic lockdown. The agony and destitution of cancer patients in our country can be somewhat relieved by proper medical care and skilled nursing facilities and thats why the work done by DMCH BMT Unit is indispensable.
Dr. Wrishi Raphael
