Banking cord blood leads to life for 3-year-old

England has possibilities for either private or public banking of cord blood, but neither was adequate for little Eva Winston-Hart.  She had been diagnosed with leukemia and needed a transplant.  Unfortunately none of the cord blood in England was a good enough match.

After searching for months, her parents found a match – in the U.S.

Eva will have her transplant in May, but her parents are marvelling at their narrow escape from failure.  Her mother comments that she thinks the government should save every umbilical cord for the stem cells.

She says, "There are 11 million donors world-wide and that was the only one."

The family of a three-year old British girl who suffers from a rare form of leukaemia has called for blood from umbilical cords to be routinely saved. The parents of Eva Winston-Hart searched for months for a donated umbilical cord that had matching stem cells to Eva's own before finally finding one in America. Her mother Amy said: "Every cord is potentially a life-saver. It just gets thrown in the bin. If that donor cord had just been thrown in the bin, there wouldn't be that match for Eva. ... There are 11 million donors world-wide and that was the only one." [Leicester Mercury, 2 April]

 Read the original story at http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=132384&command=displayContent&sourceNode=133130&contentPK=17010349&folderPk=77458&pNodeId=133088

Summary provided by Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, 5-6 St Matthew Street, London, United Kingdom, SW1P 2JT, +44 20 7222 5845.

These summaries, with links to the sources, are found on their website www.spuc.org.uk/news .  The accuracy of the summaries depends on the accuracy of the cited sources, which are paraphrased rather than quoted.

Updated on RARTL July, 2007