1,000 new beginnings: DKMS and Sankalp celebrate milestone for children with thalassemia in India
Bengaluru: One thousand children, one thousand families and one thousand new beginnings: Sankalp India Foundation has reached the milestone of 1,000 paediatric stem cell transplantations, giving children with severe inherited blood disorders such as thalassemia the prospect of a healthy life beyond regular blood transfusions and lifelong treatment. The milestone will be celebrated in Bengaluru on 5 September under the theme “1,000 Beginnings”. It also marks an important achievement in the more than ten-year partnership between Sankalp India Foundation and the international nonprofit organisation DKMS, together with medical and knowledge partner Cure2Children Foundation.
Of the 1,000 transplants carried out through Sankalp, DKMS has contributed to the transplantation costs of more than 820 children. Over the years, the collaboration has grown far beyond financial support for individual transplantations. Today, it spans thalassemia care, transplantation infrastructure and diagnostics, specialist training and clinical research.
“One thousand transplants show what long-term partnerships can achieve. Sankalp brings extraordinary local expertise and commitment, Cure2Children contributes vital medical knowledge, and together we can help turn access to cure into a reality for more children. This is exactly the kind of sustainable collaboration we want to build: in the country, for the country,” says Dr. Elke Neujahr, Global CEO of DKMS.
More than ten years of growing impact
Sankalp began its first paediatric bone marrow transplantation programme in Bengaluru in 2015 in partnership with Cure2Children. In the same year, the collaboration with DKMS started with free HLA typing and has since developed across the treatment pathway. DKMS supports HLA typing for patients and their families, thalassemia management and transplantation costs, and has invested in specialised paediatric BMT capacity and molecular diagnostics in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad. The partners also collaborate on specialist training for nurses and, since 2025, on clinical research.
“For us, these 1,000 transplants are 1,000 beginnings and proof that cure can be made accessible when organisations combine their strengths with a shared purpose,” says Rajat Kumar Agarwal, President of Sankalp India Foundation. “Far more than numbers, this milestone validates our approach, showing that centres in resource-constrained settings can achieve world-class outcomes and internationally recognised quality while keeping transplantation affordable and accessible. Partnerships such as those with DKMS and Cure2Children are essential to this joint effort.”
Today, Sankalp cares for more than 3,000 children through 30 comprehensive thalassemia day-care centres and operates two paediatric BMT centres in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad. Its prevention network comprises 87 centres across 81 districts, and more than 220,000 couples have been screened.
International recognition for quality of care
Another important milestone demonstrates how the partnership has evolved from expanding access to systematically strengthening quality: the BMJH-Sankalp Centre for Pediatric Hematology Oncology and BMT in Bengaluru is the first programme in India to have achieved JACIE accreditation.
JACIE accreditation is internationally recognised in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy and demonstrates compliance with rigorous standards across clinical care, stem cell collection and processing, quality management and patient safety. The accreditation underlines that internationally benchmarked transplantation quality can be delivered sustainably in India and that excellent outcomes do not always require increasingly expensive or complex models of care.
