Cord blood banking is of two types- private cord blood banking and public cord blood banking. Public cord blood banking stores donated cord blood stem cells unanimously for use by anyone in need. However a private cord blood bank stores the cord blood stem cells privately for use by the donor and relatives of the donor.
The public cord blood banks are sponsored by government and controlled under “National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)”.
However the private cord blood banking is a bit costly. The cost associated with the banking of cord blood stem cells can be divided into two parts, first one being the cost of collection of sample, removing the RBC from it, checking for all sorts of viral and microbial infections, adding cyropreservatives and storing. The second type of cost is cost of storing it in liquid nitrogen cooled places at – 96 degree centigrade temperature annually. Therefore first cost can be classified as one time cost, however second type of cost can be referred to as annual fee costs.
The one time cost related to the collection, processing and storing of stem cells cord blood varies from $600 to $6000 depending upon the choice of provider bank. The annual fee on second cost varies from $90 to $120. One time cost may seen a bit on higher side, but it is like getting a biological insurance for the family and descendents too. As even a partial match transplant not only for descendents but also ascendants has very high success probability for transplant.
Doing an analysis of costs and seeing probability for being used by family, these costs are not a hefty as they seem at the first instance. However this will not prove beneficial for the treatment of genetic diseases as the stem cell sample will already be containing the genetic code for that disease.
Regarding the differences in charges being levied by various private cord blood banking services providers, the high cost providers blame the low cost banks of skipping the tests and improper procedural aspects, on the other hand the low cost cord banking services providers claim to achieve benefit of economics of scale and also charging lower operating profit margins.
However any decision made regarding costing and decision about the cord blood banking service provider has to be made before the 28th week of pregnancy and an appropriate service provider is to be chosen up to that time, so that the remaining formalities could be started and completed before the actual child birth.
Additional information about donating cord blood can be obtained from the under mentioned links:
- National Marrow Donor Program (www.marrow.org)
- American College of Obstetrics and gynecology (www.acog.org)
- American academy of pediatrics (www.aap.org)
