The Health Ministry should contribute to the founding of a public bank for donated umbilical cord blood in Slovakia, MP Vladimira Marcinkova (SaS) declared at a press conference on Tuesday, warning that the process of donating and using cord blood has turned into an unethical business to the benefit of a single privately-owned firm.
Marcinkova pointed out that a mother might decide to donate her cord blood free-of-charge to a donor bank, which can then be used for any patient in the world. She underlined that already back in 2011 an ethical committee of the Health Ministry had voiced concern over the fact that a commercial company owns the bank with donor contributions in Slovakia and it's not available for public use.
Marcinkova added that even a relevant EU directive stipulates that banks with cord blood tissues have to be run by a public institution in public interest.
"In our country, the Health Ministry has failed to address this problem since 2011, it has failed to respond actively to this objection raised by the ethical committee and I'm interested to see how the Health Ministry is going to react to these revelations, seeing as the ministry is the very body that has granted the company in question its license," said MP.
Source: TASR
