Saving Your Baby’s Cordblood

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CordBlood banking has been in Singapore for quite some time, but a lot of parents might not be aware of the benefits.

A patient who has blood-related illness, might need to replace their Stemcells.
Uncontaminated stemcells can come from own marrow supply (Autologous), or from a third party compatible donor (Allogenic). Stemcells can be harvested from the pelvis area, or umbilical cord.

With CordBlood banking, it allows a child to use his own Stemcells for treatment later on. Otherwise, a patient need to search for a stemcell-donor through a bone-marrow registry. The chance of finding a tissue match is highest within the family, followed by race (eg Chinese, Malay).

Our history with CordBlood banking

Our children are under both CordLife and StemCord.  We registered too late for latest baby’s cordblood to be stored at Public bank.

* even if you do not wish to bank your baby’s cordblood privately, please consider Singapore’s public bank. Your baby cordblood might save someone’s live one day !!

Why do we believe in storing our kids’ cordblood?

  1. We treat cordblood banking like an insurance for their health. We hope it will give us some assurance that if some life- threatening illness should appear, we will have a Second Chance to combat the disease.
  2. With medical advances, we hope that the scope for StemCells research and treatments will improve. Hopefully, stemcells can be used to treat more illness.
  3. If you have seen a Leukaemia kid before, you would hope he/she can quickly find a matching stemcell donor. It is painful to see a young child having to go through the endless needles, and chemo treatments. We can never fully empathies what the patient is going through (both physically and mentally).

** Please do some online Research if you decide to bank your baby’s cordblood. Not everyone agree that Cord blood storage is necessary or helpful 🙂

* you might want to consider registering with BMDP as a potential cordblood donor?

Other References

In Singapore, BMDP (Bone Marrow Donor Programme) is the organisation who is tissue matching for patients worldwide. They try to bring miracles to patients who suffer from blood-related diseases. If you would like to be a donor or volunteer, please contact them. http://www.bmdp.org

If you would like to know more about CordBlood banking, please refer to :

http://www.cordlife.com
http://www.stemcord.com
http://www.scbb.com.sg Singapore Cord Blood Bank (public)

* We chose Cordlife because :

  • they are accredited (aabb)
  • we get referral fees 🙂

CordLife promotion from now till 15Sep –>http://www.cordlife.com/sg/edm/july09
They have a video on why CordBlood banking is necessary.
http://www.cordlife.com/sg/aboutus/videoresource.php?target=singaporetvc
(Video 12 : CordLife part of your Life)

Some interesting reads for me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cord_blood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cells
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Marrow
http://www.cordbloodbankingguide.com

 ** There are tons of material on YouTube,  try querying “cord blood”, “stem cells”, “bone marrow”