A 5-YEAR-OLD boy who has been living on regular blood transfusions since he was only 10 months old was saved by his newborn sibling, the Shenzhen Evening News reported yesterday.

Chen Jia was diagnosed with Thalassemia Major when he was only 10 months old. He had to survive on regular blood transfusions, putting extra financial burden on his not-so-wealthy family. He underwent a surgical operation to receive an umbilical cord blood transplant from his 5-day-old brother at the Shenzhen Children’s Hospital on Nov. 15.

An umbilical cord blood transplant is the only hope for Chen Jia to recover from the blood disease. The boy’s parents never thought of giving up on their son.

The couple, migrants from Luhu County in Shanwei City, work hard to pay for the medical treatment of Chen Jia, who received regular blood transfusions at the Shenzhen Children’s Hospital, while they waited for a matching bone marrow donor.

However, it was not easy to find the matching bone marrow for Chen Jia. Doctors suggested the couple to have another child, whose umbilical cord blood is likely to match Chen Jia’s after years of unfruitful waiting.

The couple took the doctors’ advice and the mother conceived with a hope to save their son. However, the first two fetuses the mother carried were found not to have bone marrow that matched Chen Jia’s through fine-needle tests. The couple had to give them up. It was the third pregnancy that turned out to be the family’s savior.

Chen was receiving treatment at the children’s hospital while he waited for his little brother to be born. His situation worsened in October.

Luckily, the newborn came to the world ahead of schedule, on Nov. 10. Medical staff at Shenzhen Maternity & Child Health Care Hospital collected 154 grams of the newborn’s cord blood and froze the blood at the Guangdong Cord Blood Bank.

The cord blood bank waived all the fees for test and storage for the family. Five days later, the cord blood was delivered to Shenzhen Children’s Hospital where Chen Jia received the transfusion.

According to Liu Sixi, deputy director of the hospital’s Hematology Department, the transplant surgery was successful and Chen Jia was recovering well. If he stays well for the next three to four weeks, the stem cell will be able to grow in his body.

Liu said that Chen Jia was the 12th child patient to have undergone cord blood transplant surgery this year. The hospital has conducted 64 stem sell transplant surgeries since 2012, and all of the surgeries were successful.

With more stem cell transplant surgery via cord blood in recent years, the city now has 15 hospitals designated to collect cord blood. Thirty samples of cord blood were collected in Shenzhen hospitals this year.

(Zhang Qian)