Bnei Brak’s Ma’ayanei HaYehoshua Medical Center (MYMC) has joined with Dor Yesharim to launch a FREE umbilical cord blood bank in an effort to help save more Jewish lives. Like all the hospital’s projects, this was created with the Haskamos of leading Rabbanim, including Rav Shmuel haLevi Vosner, Rav Nissim Karelitz and Rav Yitzchak Zilberstein.

MYMC is run strictly according to halacha and is renowned for operating according to both the highest medical and ethical standards.

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is blood collected from a newborns umbilical cord and placenta at birth, and stored in a cord blood bank as a precaution in case the child’s stem cells are needed for fighting disease and restoring health.  The process, including the costs of storage, can reach up to $1000 US per person, but MYMC is making this available at no charge to babies born at the hospital.

With 7,000 births a year, and the number steadily rising because of a recently expanded maternity ward, MYMC is an ideal location to create this public service center that will benefit Jews in Israel and around the world.  As well as providing a potentially life saving resource for the child, the blood bank will also enable doctors to identify potential donors for other people needing life-saving medical procedures. The MYMC program will enable participants to choose to donate to the public bank, or to preserve the UCB at the hospital’s bank for future use within their personal family.

“The common practice has been to discard the umbilical cord and placenta,” explained Dr. Yoram Liwer, CEO of Ma’ayanei HaYehoshua Medical Center.  “But research has demonstrated that this blood offers a tremendous source of stem cells, which can be used to treat as many as 45 diseases and disorders today, and even more in the future.”

Stem cells are vital to the medical process because they can indefinitely manufacture blood cells for continuous replenishment. Although bone marrow transplants have been the primary avenue for transferring stem cells, cord blood is easier to extract without risk to the donor and easier to match for a wider range of potential recipients, with a smaller risk of rejection. Stem cells can help treat leukemia, auto-immune diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Tay Sachs, as well as a range of other illnesses, and medical experts believe that with additional research, stem cells will also be used to help in the treatment for Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, Muscular Dystrophy, Parkinson’s Disease, Spinal Cord Injury, and strokes.