First bone marrow separation equipment installed at Ridge Hospital

Strides have been made at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital (Ridge Hospital) as it has acquired and installed its first bone marrow separation equipment in Ghana at the Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) centre in Accra.

The procedure in medical terms which is known as; Apheresis separates the cellular and soluble components of blood using a machine and is often done on donors where blood is centrifuged to obtain individual components.

Professor Major (Rtd) George Awuku Asare at the College of Health and Sciences, University of Ghana disclosed this to reporters on Friday, November 29 in Accra.

“What this machine is capable of doing, is to quickly spin the blood, to cause the separation of liquid and solid parts of various blood stem cells that are in the blood systems and it is fitted with a camera that is able to capture the shapes, size and image of the cells as it passes through the equipment,” Prof. Awuku Asare explained.

“After the separation is done, depending upon the clinical condition of the patient and what the patient needs, that component is given to the patient and the good thing about this is that, it’s able to take the persons own blood, take what is not needed in the blood and maintains the needed component,” he added.



Marisa Ehrbar, Sales & Corporate Consultant for Terumo BCT expressed her gratitude for the collaboration between the BMT Unit and her outfit in helping to address blood stem cells procedure for sickle cell related diseases.

“I am very glad to be here and to see that we have brought the first technology into the Ghanaian market and in collaboration with the BMT Unit here at the Ridge Hospital, our aim is to bring the education on the application of our devices, along with the people running it for the nation to benefit from this technology,” she remarked.




BMT Unit Ghana

The BMT centre in Ghana usually serves persons living with sickle cell disease (SCD), otherwise known as sickle cell anaemia.

BMT or Blood Stem Cell Transplant is a procedure that replaces the unhealthy blood-forming cells in SCD patients with healthy ones.

It is by far the only known cure for the disease and is mostly used to treat patients with severe SCD in Europe and other parts of the world.