The availability of clotting factor concentrates (CFC) treatment is critical when it comes to the level of care a medical establishment can provide for hemophilia patients. Typically, when there is a small amount of CFCs available, care is restricted to treating acute bleeds. It’s only when supplies are more plentiful that physicians can begin to perform the kind of corrective surgeries which can have a lasting impact on patients.
For the Hemophilia Day Care Centre of Mumbai, the turning point from treating acute bleeds to performing corrective surgeries really began in 2016, when the facility began receiving donated factor product from the World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH) Humanitarian Aid Program. The donations had an immediate impact on the quality of care, and as word spread of the availability of factor, more patients began going to the facility in search of treatment. It became apparent that treatment options that had been out-of-reach before, such as corrective surgery, were now a possibility.
“WFH humanitarian aid is helping us… to do a lot of surgeries which were unthinkable for us until now,” explains, Vikash Goyal, President of Haemophilia Federation of India, “[So far], we’ve been able to do 150 to 200 surgeries.” The Hemophilia Day Care Centre of Mumbai has also been able to perform over 100 dental procedures since 2016. Not only is the sheer volume of surgeries a big step forward for the facility, but the variety of performed surgeries is also important, because it has allowed doctors to broaden their experience, become better at their jobs, and consequently, provide better care for patients.
In one case, a young boy from Pune was severely hurt while playing with other children, suffering almost complete paralysis of his four limbs. When he arrived at the Hemophilia Day Care Centre of Mumbai, he was very weak and had not eaten anything for 48 hours. The availability of WFH Humanitarian Aid donated factor made it possible to perform corrective surgery on the child, and six weeks after surgery and physiotherapy, he was able to walk again.