Serbia not to get public stem cell bank in 2017 either – No money for completion of works started back in 2012
The state has set aside RSD 15 million in the 2017 budget for the construction and equipping of the first public cord blood stem cell bank, but the money is sufficient only for the completion of another phase, not the complete bank.
Dr Radoje Simic, director of the Institute for Mother and Child Healthcare, in whose yard the public bank is being built, says that an additional RSD 79 million for construction works and an additional RSD 131 million for purchase of equipment are needed in order for the bank to start working.
– Money needs to be invested in “clean rooms”, which have to be built all at once. These are special rooms where samples are prepared. Still we didn't expect to be able to do it all at once. We know that the financial situation is not good. No one could have predicted the financial crisis. If any funds are left in the budget and if the money is redirected to us, the most realistic projection is for the bank to be completed in 2018 – Dr Simic says.
Until the first public bank is completed, everybody who wants to keep cord blood stem cells harvested at their child's birth will still need to opt for trusting them with one of the 15 foreign facilities registered in Serbia, where the cost of keeping the cells for a period of 20 years is around EUR 1,800. Unlike these private foreign stem cell banks, storing samples in a public bank would be free.
Furthermore, such a public bank would be available to everybody who needs stem cells due to various diseases, and not just to those who keep them there. Family stem cell banks would be founded too, as they always accompany public banks, and they would be used for storing samples for the needs of a diseased family member.
The founding stone for the bank was laid down in late 2012, marking the beginning of the works on the facility whose area has now reached 600 square meters and which will be able to store up to 10,000 stem cell samples.
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