Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
Damascus, SANA- Several years ago… upon direct follow-up by Mrs. Asma al-Assad, work began to establish the first center of its kind for stem cell transplantation to treat children with cancer, hereditary and incurable blood diseases in Syria, in addition to congenital immunodeficiency and metabolic diseases.
Last June and following great efforts, achievement became a reality in turn for disability, healing in turn of disease and suffering, and strength instead of blockade as Mrs. Asma al-Assad opened the center inside the Children’s Hospital in Damascus to launch work and hope for the recovery of hundreds of children..
The center was equipped with the up-to-date medical technologies, adopting the highest technical and engineering standards that ensure the best levels of prevention, disinfection and isolation that guarantee the safety of the sick child and the success of operations.
This center comes to deal with and control cancer in Syria and as a starting point for a series of very important achievements in the field of raising the level of cancer control, which will continue in the coming months and years to be a future nucleus for participation in stem cells therapy.
Only few weeks after the opening of the center, the first complicated transplantation of blood stem cells was performed for the 9-year-old child, Murtada Kinar.
According to the medical team, the operation was successful as it allowed the reconstruction of bone-marrow, and as a consequence, reconstructing white blood cells, hemoglobin and platelet.
Murtada is the first child who has undergone that operation at the Center of Blood Stem Cells and the Cell Therapy in Damascus which was opened by Mrs. Asma al-Assad last June to be the first of its kind in Syria.
The child has suffered from Neuroblastoma (NB) which is considered as one the most dangerous cancers and tumors that afflict the children.
Nisreen Othman/ Mazen Eyon
