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 Types Of Cord Blood Banks – Understand The Difference To Select The Right Bank

Private Vs. Public Cord Blood Banks

Cord blood banks are mainly of two types, i.e. public cord blood banks and Private Banks. Normally, public cord blood banks are set up to facilitate umbilical stem cell research for disease treatment and for utilization in transplants of non-relatives. If you decide to save your baby's cord blood at a public cord blood bank, they won’t provide you the link between your baby and her cord blood unit. Therefore, in time of need, there is no guarantee that you will be able to access your baby’s cord blood unit. On the contrary, if you donate your baby's cord blood to a private bank, no one else is authorized to access and use that particular cord blood unit without your permission.

Public cord blood banks have been further categorized according to profit and non-profit objectives.

The Non-Profit Public Bank

An estimate says that about 75 per cent of cord blood banks across the globe are either public or private non-profit ones, which work for public interest. They save samples for transplant or cord blood research, and for family use, if a family has a known risk with a rare HLA group.

Remember, if you donate cord blood to a non-profit bank, then the bank, and NOT YOU, are the owner of it. These banks store the blood for free and add them in the donor registry, which is accessed by doctors and researchers.

The For-Profit Public Bank

These banks save your samples for free, but make profit by selling the cord blood units for research. The selling of freely stored blood is legal in US, but illegal in several Asian and European nations.

Private Cord Blood Bank

A private bank is an independent unit and not owned by the state. As mentioned earlier, ONLY YOU are entitled to access and use your cord blood sample. Such creative wedding photography charge around $500 to $2,000 to store the sample. The charges vary with different private banks. Besides this, there is a maintenance fee or handling fee, which comes to around $100 annually.

Research Public Banks (RPBs)

These are another kind of banks, which were set up in the early 2000’s. The cord blood samples stored in such banks are not used for transplants, but ONLY for research. The banks take your samples for free and use them in their own research or sell them to other researchers.

So, now that you are aware of the kinds of cord blood banks, you can go for cord blood donations depending on whether you want to donate the sample for creative wedding photography use or simply help in research. Remember, if you don’t like the idea of someone else using your baby’s stem cells, forget using public cord blood banks.