Vietnam has been successful in performing the first marrow transplant, Vietnam News Agency on Wednesday quoted the announcement of country's Central Hematology and Blood Transfusion Institute as reporting. The transplant was operated on Nguyen Thi Lan, a local 21-year-old leukemia sufferer, and the donor of blood-forming stem cell was her elder sister. After two-month treatment, Lan has been discharged from the institute in a normal health condition. Tests no longer found cancer cells, and her marrow is reported to be normal. The institute's vice director Bach Quoc Khanh said a new method of chemical treatment was used in the transplant to enable the patient to accept cells resistant to cancer. The new method also helped reduce the risk of side-effects such as infection and bleeding which can lead to the patient's death. The institute currently receives nearly 300 patients every day, with 70 percent of them being leukemia sufferers, according to Xinhua.
