New clinics will help address Ontario’s stem-cell ‘crisis’

Facilities will boost capacity as demand for advanced cancer treatment increases

Ontarians who need life-saving stem-cell transplants for leukemia and other blood cancers will get them faster when new clinics in Toronto and London come into service, says Health Minister Eric Hoskins.

The facilities at Princess Margaret Hospital and London Health Sciences centre will boost capacity by 440 transplants annually, 45 per cent more than the 958 transplants conducted last year.

“We needed to do more,” Hoskins told a news conference at Princess Margaret on Thursday where doctors spoke of a “crisis” in getting bone marrow transplants done quickly enough.

Frances Hillier, whose 18-year-old daughter Laura died while waiting for a transplant last year, spoke of the heartbreak of enduring additional chemotherapy treatments until her turn came for a transplant.

“No patient must ever wait for this urgent treatment,” Hillier said, fighting back tears.

That experience, chronicled in the Star, was the catalyst for action, Hoskins told reporters later.

“It’s devastating,” added Hoskins, a physician. “That led me to action. That convinced me that we needed to aggressively address the challenge of capacity and the wait times that were, frankly, too long, at that time.”

The waiting list has been cut in half to six weeks in the last year, which is within the target time frame, ministry officials said.

No dates have been set for the expansion at Princess Margaret and London, but planning and design work has begun. An expansion of stem-cell transplants at Sunnybrook hospital, announced previously, is also in the works. Stem-cell transplants are becoming more common thanks to advances in research, which make more people eligible, which, in turn, means demand is increasing. The procedure rebuilds a patient’s immune system using donated stem cells.

“It can be effective for more and more people,” Hoskins said.

The government has been sending urgent cases to the United States for transplants. Fifty-seven cases were approved last year, up from 24 the previous year.

That course of action is still available, but the goal, with the expansions of treatment at Ontario hospitals, is to enable people to stay closer to home, Hoskins said.

“No one wants to have to travel long distances to unfamiliar locations, to a foreign health-care system.”