Cord Blood Banking in the Middle East

If there's one building that I never get tired of looking at in KL, it has definitely got to be the Petronas Twin Towers. If the number of tourists in the park just beneath it is any indication, it confirms that I am certainly not the only one. Since the sunshine brings such perfect days and stormy nights, even the movie producers are out in full force, taking full advantage of the predictability of cloudless skies.

These towers were once the tallest in the world (est 1998), but it has now been beaten by the Taipei 101 (2004) and I read that the completion of Dubai's Burj Dubai which is a huge structural icon in the making, will rank number one as of next year if the project finishes on schedule (estimated completion Dec 2009).

I know you must be wondering where I'm going with this but please indulge me a little longer.

As someone who has yet to visit the middle east nations, I can only imagine what their cities and populations are like. Dubai has a population of just over a million people, so I'm wondering what all the space in the Burj will be used for, but I suppose that they are planning to attract migrants to the city and plan to expand the city's population to three times of what it is today in the next one or two decades.

The population in other Arab Emirates is also fairly small. Doha, the capital of Qatar which lies westerly of Dubai across the sparkling Persian Gulf competes with Dubai in terms of infrastructure and is likewise in the process of establishing itself for other activities apart from finance. Doha laid claim to a fantastic sports center built to groom and train athletes for modern Olympics and apparently also has some architecturally tasteful and stylish designer buildings which serve as office and varsities.

Qatar is wealthy due to their oil and gas deposits which provide the financial bedrock for the economy and with a small population of less than a million, the GDP is thus very high.

It is in Doha which Richard Branson and his partner Excalibur (PE fund) have decided to relocate and re-launch the Virgin Cord Blood Bank with the new name of Virgin Health Bank QSTP (where QSTP is an abbreviation for Qatar Science and Technology Park).


WHY DOHA?

According to the press article, the Virgin Team did consider other major cities in the UAE but decided on Doha due to the Qatari commitment from the government and its Queen:

BACKED BY THE GOVERNMENT
"Branson said today that the bank chose Qatar because “the government of Qatar and the queen in particular understood the importance of this and wanted it.” Evans said that the presence of facilities such as the Weill Cornell Medical College campus and the future Sidra Medical & Research Center (now under construction) in Qatar were also part of the country’s draw."

The Qatar Science Center (featured on the right)


HOW MUCH?

At the press conference held on Tuesday, the investment in starting a cord blood bank was announced to require 9 million British Pounds (46 million RM) while stating that 10 million USD had already been spent.

As for the charge for Virgin's services which encompass a private-public model, nothing is confirmed but it is supposed that the Qatari government will initiate the project by footing the bill. Given a birth rate of approx. 16 births per 1000 people, all of Qatar would have a birth rate of 16,000 per year. Not too much to handle if most deliveries are managed by a few hospitals.

The shareholders have declared that all profits from the service will be channeled back into health care charities, and to be fair to the corporates, probably less operational and running costs.


NEW GOALS

"The company’s goal is to create a comprehensive source of stem cells that could be of particular use for treating people of Middle Eastern descent, whose tissue types are often underrepresented in the public tissue banks such as those in the U.S. and elsewhere. “This cord blood bank could end up being bigger than the U.K.’s bank quite quickly,” Branson noted at a press conference today marking the company’s inaugural board meeting in Qatar."

I wrote about Virgin's plan previously and if you need a helpful reminder of what it was, click here.


Cultural Mind-Shift

One of the acknowledged challenges of the service would be to convince the Qataris to participate and engage the cord blood service. I was very impressed to know that the Qatari Islamic religious leaders are forward thinking and have already issued a fatwa (muslim sharia law) approving the collection of cord blood and encouraging its use. Dr. Yousuf Qaradawi a prominent Islamic scholar has endorsed its use.

Here in Malaysia, it would be great if the Islamic leaders would take up the issue and do the same in responding to the concept of cord blood banking.