News

In 2008, the UK Human Tissue Authority (HTA) announced new regulations governing the collection of umbilical cord blood requiring that in hospital maternity units must be licensed to perform collections; licensing requires that hospitals meet certain minimum standards of procedure both for harvesting the cells and for maintaining care of the mother, as well as paying several thousand pounds (see previous news). Commercial banks now provide a licensed healthcare professional to perform the harvesting procedure.

The Times newspaper has reported that King’s College hospital in London and Watford General hospital in Hertfordshire have banned the collection of stem cells at birth for private (individual) storage, whilst permitting collections for donation to the public NHS Cord Blood Bank or Anthony Nolan Trust cord blood bank. Other hospitals such as the University College London hospital are reported to ban any personal collections of stem cells, including for donation to public banks (see Times report). Individuals who wish to store cord blood for private use – including those with strong personal reasons for doing so, such as the woman featured in the article, whose sister died from a rare blood disorder – may need to pay not only for private collection of the cord blood, but also to give birth in a private hospital that would permit this, which would be substantially more expensive. This could be seen as widening still further the inequity of healthcare services available to the majority of citizens and the few with significant personal wealth.