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If you or your child has a fever during or after transplant, go to hospital immediately — at any hour. Infection with no functioning immune system can become life-threatening within hours. Do not wait until morning and do not take paracetamol and go back to bed.

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Bone marrow transplant in India

Matched sibling, half-matched parent, unrelated donor and autologous stem cell transplant at accredited Delhi NCR centres — for thalassemia major, sickle cell disease, aplastic anaemia, myeloma and blood cancers.

For thalassemia and sickle cell disease, transplant is the only treatment that offers a cure rather than lifelong management. Most of the families who contact us about it are asking on behalf of a child, and for those children the timing matters more than almost anything else.

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Clinically reviewed by Dr. Annie Varughese, Consultant Haematologist Clinical oversight Dr. Annie Varughese, MD, FACC Last reviewed August 2026 Editorial and medical review policy
First step
HLA typing
A blood test, usually possible at home
Matched sibling chance
1 in 4
Per full sibling
If no sibling matches
A parent can donate
Half-matched transplant is now well established
Time in India
3 to 4 months
Longer for half-matched or unrelated donors
On this page
  1. Type the family first
  2. Conditions we treat
  3. Types of transplant
  4. How we choose the centre
  5. Risks, and who should not travel
  6. What your journey looks like
  7. Questions families ask
  8. Send your reports
Read first

Type the family before you book anything

This is the single most useful thing on the page, and it costs almost nothing. HLA typing is a blood test. It can be done at a laboratory in your own country, and the result determines the entire shape of what follows.

Type every full sibling

Each has roughly a one in four chance of matching. With three siblings the odds of at least one match are already better than even.

Type both parents

A parent is essentially never a full match but is always a half match — which makes haploidentical transplant possible for almost every patient who has a living parent.

Do it before travelling

Families frequently arrive in Delhi and then begin typing, losing three to four weeks of accommodation costs waiting for results that could have been obtained at home.

Send us the report

With the typing in hand we can tell you within 48 hours which kind of transplant is realistic, roughly what it will cost, and how long you should plan to stay.

If typing is genuinely unavailable near you, tell us and we will arrange it here — but check first. A single blood test taken at home has saved families several thousand dollars in unnecessary waiting.

Conditions

Conditions we treat

Each has its own page explaining what the condition is, what treatment exists short of transplant, and at what point transplant becomes the right answer.

ConditionDetailed page
Thalassemia majorRead → Sickle cell diseaseRead → Aplastic anaemiaRead → Multiple myelomaRead → Primary immunodeficiency in childrenRead → Myelodysplastic syndromesRead →

Transplant is also used for acute leukaemia, lymphoma and some inherited metabolic disorders. Those are covered on the leukaemia and lymphoma pages.

Types

Types of transplant

Which applies to you depends almost entirely on who in your family is available and how well they match.

Procedure 01

Matched sibling donor transplant

Stem cells from a brother or sister whose tissue type matches. Each full sibling has roughly a one in four chance of being a match, which is why HLA typing the whole family is always the first step. Where a matched sibling exists this is the safest and most successful form of allogeneic transplant, with the lowest rates of graft-versus-host disease.

Hospital stay
4 to 6 weeks, much of it in protective isolation
Total time in India
3 to 4 months
Indicative cost
On request
Procedure 02

Haploidentical transplant

A half-matched donor — almost always a parent, and sometimes a child or a half-matched sibling. Every patient with a living parent or child has a donor by definition, which has transformed access for families with no matched sibling. Post-transplant cyclophosphamide has brought its results much closer to matched sibling transplant.

Hospital stay
5 to 7 weeks
Total time in India
4 to 5 months
Indicative cost
On request
Procedure 03

Matched unrelated donor transplant

Stem cells from a volunteer donor identified through an international registry. Finding a match depends heavily on ethnic background, and donors of South Asian, Middle Eastern and African origin are considerably under-represented on registries — which means the search succeeds less often for our patients than for European ones.

Search time
2 to 4 months before transplant can be scheduled
Total time in India
4 to 5 months
Indicative cost
On request
Procedure 04

Autologous stem cell transplant

Your own stem cells are collected, stored, and returned after high-dose chemotherapy has cleared the marrow. Because the cells are your own there is no rejection and no graft-versus-host disease, so it is considerably less hazardous than an allogeneic transplant. It is standard in myeloma and used in some relapsed lymphomas.

Hospital stay
3 to 4 weeks
Total time in India
2 to 3 months
Indicative cost
On request
Procedure 05

HLA typing, donor search and pre-transplant workup

Tissue typing of the patient and every available family member, assessment of organ function, iron overload and infection screening, and a formal decision on whether transplant is the right course. Much of this can begin in your own country before anyone travels, and doing so saves weeks and considerable expense.

Family HLA typing
Often possible at home — a simple blood test
Workup in India
2 to 3 weeks before admission
Indicative cost
On request
Selection

How we choose the centre

Volume in your specific condition

A unit performing fifty thalassemia transplants a year is not the same as one performing five. In transplant the relationship between volume and survival is among the strongest in medicine.

Isolation facilities and infection control

HEPA-filtered positive-pressure rooms, a dedicated transplant nursing team, and a blood bank able to supply irradiated components at any hour. These determine survival more than any drug.

Paediatric capability where relevant

Most of our transplant patients are children. That requires paediatric haematologists, paediatric intensive care and nursing staff trained for children, in the same hospital.

Ask any unit two questions: how many transplants for your specific condition they performed last year, and what their survival figures are for that condition. Both should be answered without hesitation.

Honestly

Risks, and who should not travel

Transplant carries substantial risk. Infection while the immune system is absent, graft-versus-host disease, organ toxicity from the conditioning treatment, graft failure and relapse are all real, and a proportion of patients die from the treatment itself. Those risks are weighed against a condition that, in thalassemia or sickle cell disease, will otherwise shorten life considerably. Ask any centre for their own survival figures for a patient of your age with your condition, and be wary of reassurance offered before your reports have been read.

Some patients should not travel yet

Active uncontrolled infection

Transplant destroys immunity almost completely. Any active infection — including tuberculosis, which must be actively excluded in our patients — has to be treated and cleared first.

Disease not yet in remission

Most transplants for leukaemia are performed once remission has been achieved. Travelling with active uncontrolled disease is generally the wrong sequence.

No donor identified

Without a matched sibling, a half-matched parent or child, or a registry match, transplant is not possible. We will tell you this before you spend anything.

Severe organ damage

Advanced heart, liver or kidney impairment — including from years of iron overload in thalassemia — may make transplant unsafe. Assessment of this comes before any planning.

Unable to stay three to four months

An abandoned transplant is worse than no transplant. If the family cannot commit to the full period near the centre, we will say so plainly at the outset.

We turn away a substantial share of transplant enquiries, most often because no donor exists or because the disease is not yet controlled. Telling you immediately is more useful than a quotation.

Your journey

What your journey looks like

A child with thalassemia major and a matched sibling donor, from first message to going home.

01
HLA typing at home — before anything else
Patient and every full sibling. A blood test, usually available in your own country, and it decides everything that follows.
02
Send reports — within 48 hours of typing
Typing results, blood counts, transfusion history, ferritin and liver assessment. We reply with what is realistic and what it costs.
03
Visa and travel — 2 to 4 weeks
Invitation letters for the patient, the donor and at least one attendant. Donors need their own visa.
04
Workup — 2 to 3 weeks
Confirmatory typing, organ function, iron overload assessment, infection screening including tuberculosis, and dental clearance. The donor is assessed separately.
05
Conditioning and transplant — 4 to 6 weeks
Chemotherapy to clear the marrow, then the stem cell infusion, then the wait for engraftment in protective isolation.
06
Early recovery near the centre — 6 to 10 weeks
Immunity is still absent. Frequent clinic visits, and this is when graft-versus-host disease and infection appear. Do not go home during this period.
07
Home, with a long follow-up plan
Immunosuppression tapered over months, revaccination from scratch after a year, and monitoring of growth, fertility and endocrine function for years.
Send reports and HLA typing
Questions

Questions families ask

HLA typing of the patient and every full sibling. It is a simple blood test, it can almost always be done in your own country, and it determines everything that follows — whether a matched sibling transplant is possible, whether a half-matched parent will be needed, or whether an unrelated donor search must begin. Families frequently travel before doing this and lose weeks as a result.

Roughly one in four for each full sibling, and the chance rises with the number of siblings. Parents are almost never a full match but are always a half match, which makes haploidentical transplant possible for essentially every patient who has a living parent or child. Half-siblings and cousins are rarely useful, with the exception of communities where marriage between relatives is common, where the odds improve somewhat.

It used to be, and it no longer is. The introduction of post-transplant cyclophosphamide has brought haploidentical results close to matched sibling transplant in many conditions. Graft-versus-host disease and infection rates remain somewhat higher, and recovery can be slower, but for a family with no matched sibling it is a genuine and effective option rather than a last resort.

Plan on three to four months, and longer for a haploidentical or unrelated donor transplant. The transplant admission itself is four to six weeks, but the period afterwards — when immunity is still recovering and complications appear — must be spent close to the transplant centre. Leaving early is the commonest avoidable cause of a poor outcome.

The donated immune cells recognising the recipient's body as foreign and attacking it, most often the skin, gut and liver. It is the central risk of allogeneic transplant. Some degree of it can be beneficial in leukaemia because the same cells attack residual disease, but severe forms are dangerous and require prolonged immunosuppression.

Yes, in two ways. The graft may not take, leaving the patient without functioning marrow and requiring a second attempt. Or the original disease may return. Both are real possibilities and any centre unwilling to discuss their own rates for your specific condition should be avoided.

Because international stem cell registries are dominated by donors of European origin, and tissue types cluster by ethnicity. Patients of South Asian, Middle Eastern and African background are considerably less likely to find a matched unrelated donor. This is precisely why haploidentical transplant from a parent has become so important for our patients.

Related pages: Bone marrow transplant cost in India  ·  Cancer treatment  ·  Organ transplant  ·  All treatments  ·  Medical visa guides

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