MEDICAL TISSUE BANKS BRING MULTIPLE BENEFITS TO COUNTRIES BY GLYN O. PHILLIPS AND JORGE MORALES

For millions of injured and disabled people around the world, the treatment brings a new quality of life. Called tissue grafting or transplantation, it relies on the use of sterilized bone, skin, and other tissues to heal serious injuries, wounds, and sickness. Prime beneficiaries include severe burn victims, and men, women, and children suffering from crippling
diseases, birth defects, and blindness. Long applied in plastic and orthopaedic surgery, tissue grafting once relied only on using a patient¡¯s own tissues, known as an autograft. But now tissues from human or animal donors (allograft) are used for transplantation.
This new form of tissue grafting has made big strides over the past decade. An expanding number of facilities today prepare the valuable tissues to the high-quality standards demanded
in medical care. Dozens of such new tissue banks have opened in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America. A productive channel of progress has been an IAEA-supported technical cooperation
programme. Through it, experts have worked together behind the scenes to help national health authorities establish tissue banks,
train associated staff, and develop standards and regulatory guides. The IAEA accordingly has
gained more experience and success than any other international organization in supporting
the establishment of tissue banks for medical use in developing countries. Increasingly for quality and cost reasons, the technology of irradiation is used to sterilize tissues for medical care. The IAEA, through its technical cooperation channels, assists national atomic energy authorities to safely and productively employ radiation technology.
An interregional programme on radiation and tissue banking, initiated over a decade ago, today extends to 30 countries. Measuring Impacts. As experience has been gained through the IAEA programme, the growth and output of tissue banks have been exponential. To the year
2001, participating countries have produced and used more than 220,000 allografts (donated tissues) for medical care. The grafts are valued at US$51.8 million, based on the mean tissue bank prices in the USA and Europe. This is far
higher than the total expenditure associated with the IAEA programme, which through 2001 amounted to $6.3 million, including training costs of about $2 million. Countries have realized other savings by avoiding the costly
importation of grafts. In Mexico, for example, a $400 graft imported from the USA actually costs the patient at least $3000, due to value added taxes, import fees, and other charges. Elsewhere,
costs can be higher. Importing a massive bone graft from the USA into the Republic of Korea, for example, can cost up to $10,000. In Sri Lanka, which established a tissue bank with the IAEA¡¯s support, more than $200,000 is saved annually in tissue importation costs Alongside cost benefits, another outcome is the exposure of
surgeons in developing countries to newer methods of using allografts through the IAEA Programme. This has helped to create a positive change in their approach to surgical treatment in
their countries. In Argentina, a network of tissue banks, associated medical centers, and radiation authorities has been established over the past decade. The National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) works closely with the Ministry
of Health, operating and regulating a Center for Radiation Sterilization and Training. The Center serves a series of skin and bone tissue banks nationally which, in turn, supply hospitals and clinics.

article from IAEA Homepage (2002)

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