Bone marrow transplant in Nepal: Challenges and Outcomes

Ever since the first bone marrow transplant (BMT) was performed in 2012, patients with blood disorders are not bound to travel to neighbouring countries for BMT .Establishing a sustainable BMT program in aresource constraint setting and that too ,in a government setup is a challenge. However, Civil Service Hospital is providing state of the art service for the last couple of years. Cost for autologous, allogenic and haploidentical bone marrow transplant is reasonably low compared to neighboring countries.Although BMT is only a curative option for patients with blood malignancies ,benign blood disorders like Thalassemia and aplastic anemia are highly curable with BMT and such patients should be offered BMTas early after diagnosis as possible .This paper outlines the BMT activity in Nepal and describes ,in some detail,the transplant program at Civil Service Hospital ,Kathmandu ,Nepal.