The team led by a haematologist, Dr. Nosakhare Bazuaye, performed a successful surgery made on an indigent sickle cell patient, who suffered a stroke at seven.

Chief Medical Director of UBTH, Prof. Michael Ibadin, said the cell transplant began three years ago, when the institution assembled a team of 18 experts, which it sent to Switzerland in an effort to bring comfort to Nigerians suffering from sickle cell anaemia and other diseases.

According to Ibadin, with the breakthrough, the two-week procedure which would have cost about N40m outside the country can now be done for as low as N2m locally.

He said, “This is the first time it is happening here, and this is the first time it is happening in Africa, outside Egypt and South Africa.

“It did not start now but three years ago when we sent 18 experts to Switzerland in batches and in the course of doing that, experts from Switzerland came here to put up the infrastructure.”

Surrounded by some of the experts, including Bazuaye, who carried out the procedure on the seven-year-old son of a retiree, the CMD explained what the procedure entailed.

He said, “Stem cell means primitive cell; the transplantation means you are taking from one person and transplanting to the other. For you to get the stem cell, you have to go to the bone marrow, but then it is not every cell there that is primitive. The process requires extensive technical knowledge and it’s a delicate procedure.

“To do this, you have to break down the defences of the donor through drugs. You need to get this (primitive cell) from somebody to transfer to others.

“The likely beneficiaries include sicklers, one of which we just did the stem cell transplantation on. A procedure like this can make a sickler go from SS to AA. You harvest from one source (donor) who is compatible with the patient and transplant. Cancer patients can also benefit.”

He added, “In this particular case, a child at seven, he had already had a stroke and was at the risk of having a second. The person that donated to him was the brother, who is 14. There was cross-matching which had to be done, but was not available in this country. We had to bring in somebody from Basel (Switzerland).”

The surgery, which lasted two weeks, will take another month to determine whether the grafting will jell, but an upbeat Ibadin sees nothing that could undermine the process.

He, however, called on Nigerians to rally round the institution, in its effort to make the specialised surgery widely available at a reduced cost.

He said, “It is an expensive procedure but we are not looking at that as we want a breakthrough.

-Punch