But how and where do you store umbilical cord tissue? There are two ways. Some families choose to pay to store it privately. Several companies will freeze and store the blood for an initiation fee that can range from $1,200 to $1,500. Once that is paid, families are charged a yearly maintenance fee of up to $95. The blood is kept for the exclusive use of the family that owns it, and they have sole discretion for whom it will ultimately be used.
This type of storage is becoming popular, though for some families, it can be financially difficult. (Private banking is rarely covered by insurance companies.) Still, and more importantly, experts say parents should know that blood stored for use in a particular family can go to waste. “Families should store blood privately if there’s a family member who’s already sick and might benefit,” says Dr. Nancy Kernan of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She warns that “there are only a handful of cases in which the cord blood has actually been used to treat the same child.”
When a sick person gets treatment, in fact, it’s far more likely he or she will be treated with a relative’s blood or the blood of someone unrelated to him or her. That’s why many parents choose the second option–to donate the umbilical cord blood to a public donor bank.
Nonprofit storage facilities collect cord blood that can be used later by anyone who needs it. Donating to public donor banks is free of charge to the family, but there’s one caveat: the blood becomes available to the public. There are no special circumstances for family members in the future.
A child’s ethnic makeup has also become increasingly important to the process of saving cord blood. Children of mixed marriages typically have genes that are not easily matched in the general population. One unfortunate example: baseball great Rod Carew, who is of African-Caribbean descent, married a woman of Russian-Jewish ancestry. Their daughter, Michelle, developed leukemia and was in desperate need of a bone-marrow transplant. However, it was difficult finding a match for her gene mix and in 1996, she succumbed to the blood cancer. In the case of mixed marriages, many of today’s parents are considering storing the cord blood to potentially treat a sibling who might become ill.
Parents should understand that cord blood is not a panacea, however. It cannot necessarily help everyone. Still, if you don’t have a compelling reason to save your child’s own blood or can’t afford it, making this simple donation could save a lot of lives that otherwise would be lost.
