stem cells harvest in finland

kalena_ale · Post by **kalena_ale** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 2:17 am

Y! Does anybody know if there possible stem cells harvest in finland?i ll give birth in december but i would like to know if anybody had this going immediately after giving birth?thank you!

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CH · Post by CH » Tue Jul 16, 2013 10:40 am

As far as I know you can/could only harvest stem cells for donation, not for the child (or at least that was the case a few years back). Unfortunately they stopped doing it for donations, too, as the cells were used only for a few patients a year: http://www.veripalvelu.fi/www/2757 (in Finnish, use Google translate)

kalena_ale · Post by **kalena_ale** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 6:15 am

OMG!!!!can t believe it!!!!! But i ll give birth in some other eu country will i still get the mother alowence from kela?i would even do that ..give birth somewhere else just to habe those cells collected...i can t believe it!!! How come a country like this can actually say no to progress???!!!

Adrian42 · Post by **Adrian42** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:22 am

kalena_ale wrote:But i ll give birth in some other eu country will i still get the mother alowence from kela?i would even do that ..

For the mother allowance it shouldn't matter where the baby was born when you just leave Finland for a short time for giving birth.
(Your child might find it slightly annoying having to explain for the rest of his life why the place of birth in his passport is in a country where he never lived.)

But as far as I know, Kela would not pay for the costs of giving birth in a hospital in another country.

kalena_ale wrote:How come a country like this can actually say no to progress???!!!

Why do you want to pay several thousand Euros for the storage in a private cord blood bank, with no proven usages of it as of today?
The whole thing is mostly a rip-off of over-cautious mothers.

kalena_ale · Post by **kalena_ale** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 11:19 am

Well...as far as i know..they are really helpful in case of leucemia and some other diseases.and also i knew that collecting them is around maybe 1000euros and then keeping them is around 100euros per year.i don t find it useless....finland does...and they are many thinking as me...maybe finland should at least have an agreement..biogenensis is everywhere in Europe...of course not in Finland but everywhere around it!!

Adrian thank you for your reply,i ll check with kela for further info!

Adrian42 · Post by **Adrian42** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 11:45 am

kalena_ale wrote:Well...as far as i know..they are really helpful in case of leucemia and some other diseases.

That is not true.

The companies hope that in a few years there might perhaps exist treatments that can use them.

But as far as I know, there has not yet been any case where they were successfully used for curing leukaemia of the human they were taken from.

kalena_ale wrote:biogenensis is everywhere in Europe...of course not in Finland but everywhere around it!!

Stem cell research is of course also happening in Finland, and Finnish scientists are not bad in that area.

kalena_ale · Post by **kalena_ale** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:26 pm

Yeah i knew they r good in research that s why i was amazed!anyway i ve read few more artickes and stem cells therapy does work! Anyhow it doesn t matter everybody has the right to choose.i really think it s a good idea to have ur kid ensured:)

Adrian42 · Post by **Adrian42** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:47 pm

kalena_ale wrote:anyway i ve read few more artickes and stem cells therapy does work!

There are different ways of obtaining stem cells, the most frequently used methods involve either destroying a fetus or obtaining them from an adult.

But there are as of today no proven usages of what you store in a private cord blood bank.

kalena_ale wrote:i really think it s a good idea to have ur kid ensured:)

If you have too much money and desperately want to get rid of your money, then why not.

But if you want to spend your money for doing something good for your child, there are many better ways.

Little kids rarely die of cancer, usually they die in an accident or drown in a 10cm (sic) deep pool.

When your child is 20 what is in a private cord blood bank will be in a rotten state that it is no longer usable, and except for little kids the amount of steam cells in stored in a private cord blood bank is anyway not considered to be big enough even if there would ever be successful therapies using it in the future.

kalena_ale · Post by **kalena_ale** » Tue Jul 23, 2013 11:56 pm

Thank you for all ur advices but i only asked if they do it in Finland:)

Adrian42 · Post by **Adrian42** » Wed Jul 24, 2013 1:32 am

kalena_ale wrote:Thank you for all ur advices but i only asked if they do it in Finland:)

This is absolutely not true.

You were not "only asking", you were actually complaining pretty loudly:

kalena_ale wrote:OMG!!!!can t believe it!!!!!

kalena_ale wrote:i can t believe it!!! How come a country like this can actually say no to progress???!!!

kalena_ale wrote:i don t find it useless....finland does...and they are many thinking as me...

Your incorrect thinking that it would not be useless was the reason why you complained very loudly about the situation in Finland.

And that's why you needed an explanation that the situation in Finland where this rip-off is not allowed is actually a benefit for you (you save a huge amount of money you would have otherwise wasted on a private cord blood bank).

andreabena · Post by **andreabena** » Sat Jul 27, 2013 4:16 am

Dear kalena_ale,

I find nice your idea to collect stem cells from the cord blood!
I will tell you my story with the opinion I got out of it. Some months before my baby was born I looked at what was on the market and I find out right away that there was no cells harvest, bank agent, broker, delivery service... in Finland. So basically no practical solution to give the frozen package to be stored in some other country. The stem cells bank I got in contact with offered to get a package for little money to store blood and cord tissues, and send it back with DHL, UPS, Fedex... Once they would have got it, they would have analyzed it and if the quantity and quality would have been enough and good they would have stored it for 20-25 years for about 1000 euros with even installments payment.
It looked great and pretty easy, BUT because of new EU regulation the mother must provide also a small quantity of her blood to send together with the cord blood to test if the mother has any sickness or disease before storing the cord blood and the collection has to be done by a nurse or someone with medical degree. This made me thinking to get in contact with the hospital to know if with in their birth procedure it was allowed and possible to collect the cord blood and the blood of the mother.
As you might have notice the "system" that governs Finland doesn't allow flexibility. So the mother is a guest of the public hospital, that is the only place you can give birth as there are no more private clinics, she gives birth the way she wants, within what the hospital offers, and the hospital has a strict procedure about the bio-material you are "leaving" there (tissues, blood, placenta...). There is also a lot going on all the time at the 3 hospital of the capital region (Naistenklinikka, Kätilöopisto and Jorvi) and adding an extra procedure to collect cord blood and mother blood takes some minutes.

I got a clear "No, it is not possible, we do not do it in Finland, it is not in our hospital procedure" and I arrived to speak, after some calls, to the chief of cord blood stem cells research department of Jorvi hospital to talk about the issue. He told me that what the hospital wants is the good of everyone who would benefit from cord blood stem cells to heal cancers and diseases. So the hospitals on the capital region collect stem cell when the baby borns in their public research bank to have the real possibility to have a big quantity of cells to research and develop treatments. If it becomes popular to have all the cells stored in private banks this makes the situation to have a lot of cells that might be used in the future without having cells for research, and research is very important to find treatment. For this reason the law in Finland doesn't allow private stem cells bank and harvest for private use.
The chief told me that they would like to have 20-30 ml blood for their research and I said that there could be that quantity for the research and the rest for private collection. He agreed, but this requires extra training for the personnel of the hospital, the kit one get from the private bank is always different from bank to bank and it is not in the social priority of Finland.

I realized that for such a close minded system it was not possible to continue my way. Indeed they have their procedures and you must have a nurse or someone with a medical degree to collect the blood. If the hospital doesn't support you, there is no way because they do not allow anyone from outside, at least at my time.

When the happy day came the nurse that assisted the birth saw that there was my request of blood collection on my documents, and she asked what she had to do. I told her to do nothing as at the end I gave up with the stem cells harvest, but I notice that from her personal side there was no problem at all to do it. Maybe she had a bit more time than usual. She asked then if she could collect some blood for analyze and research. This is the question they will probably ask you when your baby will be born. If you say "yes" that blood will go to the hospital blood bank after being analyzed.

If you really want to harvest the stem cells you can call the hospital where you will give birth many, many, many times until they know your name by your voice and say that you want to make the collection for private use, that you will give a kit with all the necessary "bottles, bags, needles, tubes...", that you will not use any material of the hospital, that you understand that if there is an emergency with your birth or there is need of personnel for some other birth it will not be possible to collect the blood, that you will inform the nurse that will assist THE LAST PART of your labour AS SOON AS YOU MEET HER.
Make sure they write it down in their computer system. You can ask you nurse at Neuvola to see on her computer if there is a note about the blood collection you asked at the phone. That is what happened to me.
The contract I was about to make with the private bank I chose gave me this option:
1- pay the kit for little money
2- if you open the box you cannot return it. If they say they will not collect the blood you can return the kit unused/unopened to the bank and they refund you what you paid, less the delivery costs (discuss this with the bank)
3- if they collect cord and mother blood well, you send it within the time the bank says and it is fine to store it after the analyzes, you pay the 20-25 years storage.

Not too bad. Maybe it work, maybe not, not much money waisted if it doesn't work.
Even if it happens that you might change hospital at the last moment, your request stays in the HUS (the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa) system and it can be seen by anyone in the hospital.
In my case probably it would have worked, but I felt already so tired because of the pregnancy that I didn't want to spend more energy trying to break through the "system" and the thick Finnish mentality.

The bank I chose has a pinkish website and you can google the word health future stem cells... If you like them lot at their UK site and eventually ask for the same contract conditions they offer in UK as they were a bit better then the UE one. Get also in contact with a super fast courier and get someone that can run to the airport to give your kit box to send.

They said that in their records there were 2 successful collections from Finland. They could tell they were from Naistenklinikka.

If you decide to try, get everything well organized especially if you might give birth on a weekend and also get someone at your side that is determinated as you to have the harvest done, because as you might imagine, you will be all for your baby!

Have a wonderful labour!

kalena_ale · Post by **kalena_ale** » Sat Jul 27, 2013 9:50 pm

Thank u Cathe! Thanks for all the articles .i really wanna read as much as i can about this subject.concerning adrian 42 i really think u shouldn t take it that personal...finland says no to this but it doesn t mean that everything is so bad.and yet again if the stem cells could be harvested here people would have a choice...if they pay or not that outrageous amount of money you were talking about..which by the way it s not that huge after all.right now,moms like me and others we don t really have a choice.anyhow thank you all...most probably i ll give birth back home to have those cells collected!

kalena_ale · Post by **kalena_ale** » Sat Jul 27, 2013 10:10 pm

And Adrian..u just can not say that my thinking is incorrect simply because u don t agree!!maybe somehow someday u ll find out that not everything evolves around money!!!

onkko · Post by **onkko** » Sun Jul 28, 2013 12:20 am

kalena_ale wrote:maybe somehow someday u ll find out that not everything evolves around money!!!

Everything is about money, in case of goverment its main reason to do or not to do something.
In 2013 about 60 000 were born and with your cost 1ke/each it would mean 60 000 000, sixty million.
Now you have to count how much does that help, how many cases could be saved etc.
What are possibilities that someone needs stem cells and what are odds against old treatments?

Now you have those numbers, is it really worth it? And yes you can count value on life.

And before you throw a fit you should know that all, and i mean all, vaccines etc are calculated that way. They dont give vaccinations to toddlers because they are nice, it saves money.

kalena_ale · Post by **kalena_ale** » Sun Jul 28, 2013 2:35 am

Yes of course ..it s about your own money..not the goverment s money...

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